In Search of A Better World Quotes

“The problem with the world is not a shortage of brilliant theories or feel-good slogans. The problem is that we confuse proliferation of progressive terminology with profound empathy and purposeful engagement. We say the right things, but we fail to act on them because we want to feel virtuous without paying a price”
― Payam Akhavan, In Search of A Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey

“Today we demand justice for the oppressed. We no longer accept atrocities as the inescapable fate of the defenceless. We desire and expect a better future. But when confronted with the enormity of injustice and what it demands of us, we retreat into the familiar ritual of intellectualization and moral posturing, recycling lofty liberal ideals from a safe distance. We avoid the intimate knowledge of suffering without which we will never understand the imperative of human rights.”
― Payam Akhavan, In Search of A Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey

“There can be no meaningful change if we choose to look down at the arena of anguish from thirty thousand feet.”
― Payam Akhavan, In Search of A Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey

“Extremism begets extremism. Its stripe and shape is irrelevant because radical evil is always committed in the name of a greater good, whether clothed as progress or tradition. In an interdependent world, the atrocities beyond our imagined borders do not solely express the cruelty of others; they are also connected with our own beliefs and actions, our glorification of greed, our cynical geopolitical games, which we sanitize and justify with our political sophistication. In ancient times, the Buddhist pilgrims in Bamiyan would have simply called it karma: what we release into the universe now will come back to us in the future.”
― Payam Akhavan, In Search of A Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey

“The problem with the world is not a shortage of brilliant theories or feel-good slogans. The problem is that we confuse proliferation of progressive terminology with profound empathy and purposeful engagement.”
― Payam Akhavan, In Search of A Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey