Muhammad Iqbal Quotes

I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism.

I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India.

The new world is as yet
behind the veil of destiny
In my eyes, however
its dawn has been unveiled

What is the character and general structure of the universe in which we live? Is there a permanent element in the constitution of this universe? How are we related to it? What place do we occupy in it, and what is the kind of conduct that befits the place we occupy? These questions are common to religion, philosophy, and higher poetry

I lead no party; I follow no leader. I have given the best part of my life to careful study of Islam, its law and polity, its culture, its history and its literature.

A wrong concept misleads the understanding; a wrong deed degrades the whole man, and may eventually demolish the structure of the human ego.

The idea that thought is essentially finite, and for this reason unable to capture the Infinite, is based on a mistaken notion of the movement of thought in knowledge. It is the inadequacy of the logical understanding which finds a multiplicity of mutually repellent individualities with no prospect of their ultimate reduction to a unity that makes us sceptical about the conclusiveness of thought. In fact, the logical understanding is incapable of seeing this multiplicity as a coherent universe. Its only method is generalization based on resemblances, but its generalizations are only fictitious unities which do not affect the reality of concrete things. In its deeper movement, however, thought is capable of reaching an immanent Infinite in whose self-unfolding movement the various finite concepts are merely moments. In its essential nature, then, thought is not static; it is dynamic and unfolds its internal infinitude in time like the seed which, from the very beginning, carries within itself the organic unity of the tree as a present fact.

Why hast thou made me born in this country, The inhabitant of which is satisfied with being a slave?

The great point in Christianity is the search for an independent content for spiritual life which, according to the insights of its founder, could be elevated, not by the forces of a world external to the soul of man, but by the revelation of a new world within his soul. Islam fully agrees with this insight and supplements it by the further insight that the illumination of the new world thus revealed is not something foreign to the world of matter but permeates it through and through.
Thus the affirmation of spirit sought by Christianity would come not by the renunciation of external forces which are already permeated by the illumination of spirit, but by a proper adjustment of man's relation to these forces in view of the light received from the world within.

The thought of a limit to perceptual space and time staggers the mind.

Unbeliever is he who follows predestination even if he be Muslim, Faithful is he, if he himself is the Divine Destiny.

Ends and purposes, whether they exist as conscious or subconscious tendencies, form the wrap and woof of our conscious experience.

The wing of the Falcon brings to the king, the wing if the crow brings him to the cemetery.

I am a hidden meaning made to defy. The grasp of words, and walk away With free will and destiny. As living, revolutionary clay.

The highest art is that which awakens our dormant will-force, and nerves us to face the trials of life manfully. All that brings drowsiness and makes us shut our eyes to reality around-on the mastery of which alone life depends�is a message of decay and death.

We have strayed away from God, and He is in quest of us; Like us, He is humble and is a prisoner of desire: He is hidden in every atom, and yet is a stranger to us: He is revealed in the moonlight, and in the embrace of houses.

The truth is that the religious and the scientific processes, though involving different methods, are identical in their final aim. Both aim at reaching the most real.

That is why, according to this newer psychology, Christianity has already fulfilled its biological mission, and it is impossible for the modern man to understand its original significance.

The scientific observer of Nature is a kind of mystic seeker in the act of prayer.

Maa tujhe salaam
pher lete hai nazar jis waqt bete or bahu..
ajnabi apne hi ghar me hae ban jati hai maaa..

British physician, West African Countries and Peoples Man's place is higher than the sky. Respect for man is the underlying spirit of civilization.

Democracy is a system where people are counted not weighed.

In the first period religious life appears as a form of discipline which the individual or a whole people must accept as an unconditional command without any rational understanding of the ultimate meaning and purpose of that command.

Vision without power does bring moral elevation but cannot give a lasting culture.

Let this be our beautiful departure from stagnation; let our minds come alive; enter another dimension; go beyond the stars eagerly struggling to find that ... which our naked eyes did not know existed; rise like a falcon born to soar and not be alone but be present amongst others.

But only a brief moment
is granted to the brave
one breath or two, whose wage is
The long nights of the grave

The alchemist of the West has turned stone into glass
But my alchemy has transmuted glass into flint
Pharaohs of today have stalked me in vain

For centuries Eastern heart and intellect have been absorbed in the question Does God exist? I propose to raise a new question new, that is to say, for the East Does man exist?

Reh Gyi Rasm-e-Azan, Rooh-e-Bilali Na Rahi
Falsafa Reh Gya, Talqeen-e-Ghazali Na Rahi
Azan yet sounds, but never now Like Bilal's, soulfully;
Philosophy, conviction-less, Now mourns its Ghazzali

Man is primarily governed by passion and instinct.

The poet's nature is all searching, creator and nourisher of desire; the poet is like the heart in a people's breast, a people without a poet is a mere heap of clay. If the purpose of poetry is the fashioning of men, poetry is likewise the heir of prophecy.

The Westerners have lost the vision of heaven, they go hunting for the pure spirit in the belly. The pure soul takes not color and scent from the body, and Communism has nothing to do save with the body.

The causality-bound aspect of Nature is not the whole truth. Ultimate Reality is invading our consciousness from other directions as well, and the purely intellectual method of overcoming Nature is not the only way.

It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity - by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal - has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own.

The highest stage of Man's ethical progress is reached when he becomes absolutely free from fear and grief.

Divine life is in touch with the whole universe on the analogy of the soul's contact with the body.

Who am I? Who art Thou? Where is the world?

If faith is lost, there is no security and there is no life for him who does not adhere to religion.

He is no mean poet, and his verse can rouse or persuade even if his logic fail to convince. His message is not for the Mohammedans of India alone, but for Moslems everywhere: accordingly he writes in Persian instead of Hindustani - a happy choice, for amongst educated Moslems there are many familiar with Persian literature, while the Persian language is singularly well adapted to express philosophical ideas in a style at once elevated and charming.

Everything that possesses life dies if it has to live in uncongenial surroundings.

People who have no hold over their process of thinking ara likely to be ruined by liberty of thought.

Plants and minerals are bound to predestination. The faithful is only bound to the Divine orders.

Another way of judging the value of a prophet's religious experience, therefore, would be to examine the type of manhood that he has created, and the cultural world that has sprung out of the spirit of his message.

I am but as the spark that gleams for a moment,
His burning candle consumed me - the moth;
His wine overwhelmed my goblet,
The master of Rum transmuted my earth to gold
And set my ashes aflame.

The ultimate aim of the ego is not to see something, but to be something.

Rise above sectional interests and private ambitions ... Pass from matter to spirit. Matter is diversity; spirit is light, life and unity.

It is the lot of man to share in the deeper aspirations of the universe around him and to share his own destiny as well as that of the universe, now by adjusting himself to its forces, now by putting the whole of his energy to his own ends and purposes.

I tell the truth: your enemy is also your friend-his presence makes your life fuller and richer.

But the universe, as a collection of finite things, presents itself as a kind of island situated in a pure vacuity to which time, regarded as a series of mutually exclusive moments, is nothing and does nothing.

The possessor of a sound heart puts to test his power by entering into big adventures.

Failure is not fatal until we surrender
trying again is the key of glorious victory

Life is a struggle and not a matter of privilege. It is nothing but one's knowledge of the temporal and the spiritual world.

The Ego is partly free. partly determined, and reaches fuller freedom by approaching the Individual who is most free: God.

Become dust - and they will throw thee in the air; Become stone - and they will throw thee on glass.

Inductive reason, which alone makes man master of his environment, is an achievement; and when once born it must be reinforced by inhibiting the growth of other modes of knowledge.

From your past emerges the present, and from the present is born your future.

Nations are born in the hearts of poets, they prosper and die in the hands of politicians.

Ilm Ne Mujh Se Kaha Ishq Hai Diwana-Pan
Ishq Ne Mujh Se Kaha Ilm Hai Takhmeen-o-Zan

Knowledge said to me, Love is madness;
Love said to me, Knowledge is calculation

Band-e-Takhmeen-o-Zan! Kirm-e-Kitabi Na Ban
Ishq Sarapa Huzoor, Ilm Sarapa Hijab

O slave of calculation, do not be a bookworm!
Love is Presence entire, Knowledge nothing but a Veil.

I, therefore, demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interest of India and Islam.

Conduct, which involves a decision of the ultimate fate of the agent cannot be based on illusions.

Why should I ask the wise men: Whence is my beginning? I am busy with the thought: Where will be my end?

Since love first made the breast an instrument
Of fierce lamenting, by its flame my heart
Was molten to a mirror, like a rose
I pluck my breast apart, that I may hang
This mirror in your sight
Gaze you therein

Physiologically less violent and psychologically more suitable to a concrete type of mind.

Islam is itself destiny and will not suffer destiny.

If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy.

A community receives light from its history, it becomes aware of itself by remembrance of its history.

It is true that we are made of dust. And the world is also made of dust. But the dust has motes rising.

He philosophy of Islam will be shown in terms of the modern philosophy, and if there are imperfections in the old ideas then they shall be removed. My task is merely constructive, and in this construction I shall take into consideration the best traditions of Islamic philosophy.

When the thinking of a people becomes corrupt, the pure silver becomes impure in its hands.

Diyar-e-Ishq Mein Apna Maqam Paida Kar,
Naya Zamana, Naye Subah-o-Sham Paida Kar;

Khuda Agar Dil-e-Fitrat Shanas De Tujh Ko,
Sakoot-e-Lala-o-Gul Se Kalaam Paida Kar;

Mera Tareeq Ameeri Nahin, Faqeeri Hai,
Khudi Na Baich, Ghareebi Mein Naam Paida Kar

Build in love's empire your hearth and your home;
Build Time anew, a new dawn, a new eve!

Your speech, if God give you the friendship of Nature,
From the rose and tulip's long silence weave

The way of the hermit, not fortune, is mine;
Sell not your soul! In a beggar's rags shine.

When truth has no burning, then it is philosophy, when it gets burning from the heart, it becomes poetry.

Be not entangled in this world of days and nights; Thou hast another time and space as well.