Islamic State Quotes

Because in this view the domestic principles of an Islamic state were divinely ordained, non-Muslim political entities were illegitimate; they could never be accepted by Muslim states as truly equal counterparts. A peaceful world order depended on the ability to forge and expand a unitary Islamic entity, not on an equilibrium of competing parts. ~ Henry Kissinger

Unhappy voters thought the anemic economy, Obamacare, the collapse of U.S. foreign policy, the scandals in government, and the incompetent handling of everything from the Islamic State to Ebola were the only real issues. Democrats'€ refusal to acknowledge them did not make these failures go away. ~ Victor Davis Hanson

The Islamic State is dangerous, a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic is even more so. ~ Tom Cotton

After the Islamic State, even al-Qaeda appears 'moderate'. ~ Maajid Nawaz

The Islamic State's ideology exerts powerful sway over a certain subset of the population. Life's hypocrisies and inconsistencies vanish in its face. Musa Cerantonio and the Salafis I met in London are unstumpable: No question I posed left them stuttering. They lectured me garrulously and, if one accepts their premises, convincingly. To call them un-Islamic appears, to me, to invite them into an argument that they would win. If they had been froth-spewing maniacs, I might be able to predict that their movement would burn out as the psychopaths detonated themselves or became drone-splats, one by one. But these men spoke with an academic precision that put me in mind of a good graduate seminar. I even enjoyed their company, and that frightened me as much as anything else. ~ Graeme Wood

You cannot win a war if you cannot talk honestly about the enemy Since the 9/11 attacks, political correctness and ideological prejudice - under both Republican and Democratic presidents - have distorted our analysis of the enemy, preventing us from drawing an effective plan to defeat the likes of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The Obama administration, blinded by its own preconceived ideas of why terrorism occurs, is influenced by malevolent actors who have an interest in censoring any talk of the religious aspects of the enemy's ideology. At the highest level of the U.S. government, terrorism is deemed to be the result of poverty, unemployment, and lack of political enfranchisement. This fallacy must be jettisoned. We are not at war with Islam. The people most immanently in danger, in fact, are the nonviolent and non-extremist Muslims of the Middle East, such as our allies in Jordan and the modern Muslims of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. They are on the most important front of this war, and they understand just how much religion truly matters. We do a great disservice to those brave Muslims when we try to convince the world that the threat will disappear if enough people have good jobs and sound educations. ~ Sebastian Gorka

The state which is regarded as the instrument for universalizing a certain religion must perforce be an ever expanding state. The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God's law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world ... .The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state. ~ Majid Khadduri

The Islamic State is a threat to both the moderate Islam headed by Mr. Saad al-Hariri and, of course, for Hezbollah. There is a convergence, an anxiety of a common enemy ... which is good. ~ Walid Jumblatt

ISIS stands for Islamic State In Syria. It's an acronym. ISIS is also the name of a bad ass Egyptian goddess. So for a group that is so anti woman I find it interesting and ironic that they named themselves after one ~ Johnny Corn

I'd argue, in fact, that the rise of the so-called Islamic State under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi does somewhat vindicate Osama bin Laden's strategy and his belief that making the West intervention-weary through war would lead to a power vacuum in the Middle East and that the West would abandon its support for Arab despots, which would lead to the crumbling of despotic regimes. From the ashes of that would rise an Islamic State. Bin Laden said this eleven years ago, and it's uncanny how the Arab uprisings have turned out. ~ Maajid Nawaz

It is not true that only those people come to Islamic State who have experienced no success in life. Among them are many people who have university degrees, people who were well-established. But they all see the inequities that we Muslims have long experienced and want to fight against them. ~ Abdul Sattar Abu Risha

The similarities between groups like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State and USSR are too numerous and fundamental to be ignored. Both groups are driven by a totalitarian vision. The followers of Karl Marx envisioned a world transformed into a workers' paradise in which all other classes had been destroyed and only one party, the Communist Party, was in control. Today's jihadists also have a universal vision. They look forward to a global caliphate in which all have submitted to the will of Allah and live as Muslims, the infidels and apostates having been slain. Both visions are exclusive, absolutist, and totalitarian. They are predicated on a 'them or us' vision of how the world must be. There is no possibility for peaceful coexistence with the 'other'. ~ Sebastian Gorka

Islamic state - stretching from ~ Erick Stakelbeck

The church that took two thousand years to build in Iraq and Syria, started by the apostles themselves, has nearly been destroyed in the blink of an eye at the hands of manics who won't stop until they win or they die. At least that's what everyone I met in Iraq believes. Every single one of them. ~ Johnnie Moore

I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are. That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven. ~ Barack Obama

The 'Islamic State', that strange miscegenation of Medina with Westphalia, is always in mortal danger of linking the moral austerity of monotheism with the repressive and supervisor powers of the modern nation state. ~ Abdal Hakim Murad

There is a temptation to rehearse this observation - that jihadists are modern secular people, with modern political concerns, wearing medieval religious disguise - and make it fit the Islamic State. In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse. ~ Anonymous

It is important for everybody to insure that the process will go on, that the ceasefire will hold. Of course, there is no ceasefire against Daesh [the Islamic State], Jabhat al Nusra, and Al Qaeda. ~ Mohammad Javad Zarif

With his decision to use force against the violent extremists of the Islamic State, President
Obama ... is stepping once again - and with understandably great reluctance - into the chaos
of an entire civilization that has broken down. Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but
gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism -
the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition-than at any time since the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire a century ago. ~ Hisham Melhem

This is American leadership at its best. We stand with people who fight for their own freedom, and we rally other nations on behalf of our common security and common humanity. ~ Barack Obama

I will follow anyone ...
And remind everyone ...
Of enslaved Yazidi women ...
Raped ...
And forced ...
To donate blood to ISIS men ... ~ Widad Akreyi

Some French politicians have said that the European Union should drop sanctions against Russia so everybody can join together in this fight against the Islamic State. But we're hearing from French officials that [Francois] Hollande hasn't changed his stance. He's - he's still saying that sanctions shouldn't be lifted until the Minsk agreement has been implemented. ~ Corey Flintoff

Conversely, every moderate seems to believe that his interpretation and selective reading of scripture is more accurate than God's literal words. Presumably, God could have written these books any way He wanted. And if He wanted them to be understood in the spirit of twenty-first-century secular rationality, He could have left out all those bits about stoning people to death for adultery or witchcraft. It really isn't hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery - you just put in a few lines like "Don't take sex slaves!" and "When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don't rape any of them!" And yet God couldn't seem to manage it. This is why the approach of a group like the Islamic State holds a certain intellectual appeal (which, admittedly, sounds strange to say) because the most straightforward reading of scripture suggests that Allah advises jihadists to take sex slaves from among the conquered, decapitate their enemies, and so forth. ~ Sam Harris

Sure, there's Ebola and Vladimir Putin and Islamic State terrorism. ~ Anonymous

British / Pakistani ISIS suspect, Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, is arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting jihadists to fight in Syria

• Local police named arrested Briton as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, also known as Zak, living in 70 Eversleigh Road, Westham, E6 1HQ London
• They suspect him of recruiting militants for ISIS in two Bangladeshi cities
• He arrived in the country in February, having previously spent time in Syria and Pakistan
• Suspected militant recruiter also recently visited Australia

A forty year old Muslim British man has been arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting would-be jihadists to fight for Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq.

The man, who police named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood born 24th August 1977, also known as Zak, is understood to be of Pakistani origin and was arrested near the Kamalapur Railway area of the capital city Dhaka.

He is also suspected of having attempted to recruit militants in the northern city of Sylhet - where he is understood to have friends he knows from living in Newham, London - having reportedly first arrived in the country about six months ago to scout for potential extremists.

Militants: The British Pakistani man (sitting on the left) named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood was arrested in Bangladesh.

The arrested man has been identified as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, sources at the media wing of Dhaka Metropolitan Police told local newsp ~ Zakaria Zaqib Mahmood

Every American should own a Koran. There are no excuses. Every day you can switch on the television or the radio or open a newspaper and hear or read pronouncements about what Islam is and"what the Koran says. Most of it is wrong - very wrong. You owe it to yourself, your family, and all the Americans killed on 9/11 and since to know the truth. Do not take anyone's word for it. Find out for yourself by reading the actual Koran. One of the most reliable and recognized versions is the The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali. Once you have a Koran and start to read it, take care to note the enormous differences between the half reportedly communicated to Mohammed in the beginning in Mecca, when he was weak and without followers, and the latter half, allegedly written after he returned from Medina with thousands of followers, the leader of a mighty military force. It is the post-Medina chapters of the Koran that are naturally favored by groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. They are not in fact perverting religious texts but skillfully applying those alleged revelations that best support their cause. ~ Sebastian Gorka

We have a war against Daesh (the Islamic State, or IS) in Syria. A coalition that was led by the United States, with Saudi Arabia being one of the first members of that coalition. ~ Adel Al-Jubeir

To the heads of the new Islamic State, their God was money and power on earth. ~ Kenneth Eade

The laws of the Islamic state would be derived first from the Koran. But since only about six hundred of its six thousand verses are concerned with law, and only about eighty of these deal directly with crime, punishments, contracts and family law, other sources also have to be consulted. The ~ Geraldine Brooks

The desired Islamic state might be likened to an orchard planted with olive and palm trees that will take a relatively long time to produce fruit. ~ Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

Since Khomeini's death, the popular appeal of an Islamic state - and of fundamentalism - has surely dimmed. Thinkers still debate and warriors kill, but no country seems prepared to emulate Iran. Perhaps revolutions happen only under majestic leaders, and no one like Khomeini has since appeared. ~ Ruhollah Khomeini

Our allies in the Middle East know that the Islamic State is their fight - and they have asked for very specific things to help push back against ISIL.We must give our allies the help they need to confront and defeat this evil. ~ Carly Fiorina

Muslims can say that slavery is not legitimate now, and that crucifixion is wrong at this historical juncture. Many say precisely this. But they cannot condemn slavery or crucifixion outright without contradicting the Koran and the example of the Prophet. 'The only principled ground that the Islamic State's opponents could take is to say that certain core texts and traditional teachings of Islam are no longer valid,' Bernard Haykel says. That really would be an act of apostasy. ~ Graeme Wood

As we have discussed, however, Islam is just a religion. Islamism is the ideology that seeks to impose any version of Islam over society. Islamism is, therefore, theocratic extremism. Jihadism is the use of force to spread Islamism. Jihadist terrorism is the use of force that targets civilians to spread Islamism. The Islamic State is merely one jihadist terrorist group. The problem was never "al-Qaeda-inspired" extremism, because extremism itself inspired al-Qaeda, and then inspired the Islamic State. It is this extremism that must be named - as Islamism - and opposed. ~ Sam Harris

An uncontrollable force at the other side of the border is attacking civilians," Numan Kurtulmus, a Turkish deputy prime minister, said of the Islamic State group. ~ Anonymous

The fact that this organisation is called the Islamic State reveals something even deeper. In fact, it implies that every single Islamist party in Egypt, Iraq or Tunisia are not really representing Islam and Muslim people. Nowadays, political Islam is going through a crisis, however this crisis is necessary, for it will lead to a changing way of thinking. In order to make it out of this dead-end, reviewing political Islam becomes mandatory. ~ Tariq Ramadan

There is a connection between the issue of refugees and the battle against the so-called Islamic State. ~ Thomas De Maiziere

As Graeme Wood, a scholar on the teachings and ideology of ISIS, wrote in the Atlantic, The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. . . . The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. ~ Glenn Beck

So we want an Islamic state where Islamic law is not just in the books but enforced, and enforced with determination. There is no space and no room for democratic consultation. The Shariah is set and fixed, so why do we need to discuss it anymore? Just implement it! ~ Abu Bakar Bashir

Saudi Arabia is a frightened monarchy. It's beset by Sunni extremists from the Islamic State and Shiite extremists backed by Iran. ~ David Ignatius

It is not possible to starve an organised terrorist group because it is number one a state, so it levies taxation inside the territory that is controlled by Islamic State. But also the activity, for example the smuggling of oil, is taking place in an area which is a war zone. So of course people will buy that oil because they don't have any alternative. So even if we wanted to stop that kind of trade, it will be very, very difficult to do that. ~ Loretta Napoleoni

Babe i žabe ('just say no to Greater Serbia, Greater Croatia and Islamic State!') ~ John Farebrother

At the center of President Obama's strategy for dealing with the Islamic State is an empty space. It's supposed be filled by a 'Sunni ground force,' but after more than a year of effort, it's still not there. Unless this gap is filled, Obama's plan won't work. ~ David Ignatius

President Barack Obama and many liberal-minded commentators have been hesitant to call this Islamist ideology by its proper name. They seem to fear that both Muslim communities and the religiously intolerant will hear the word "Islam" and simply assume that all Muslims are being held responsible for the excesses of the jihadist few.

I call this the Voldemort effect, after the villain in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books. Many well-meaning people in Ms. Rowling's fictional world are so petrified of Voldemort's evil that they do two things: They refuse to call Voldemort by name, instead referring to "He Who Must Not Be Named," and they deny that he exists in the first place. Such dread only increases public hysteria, thus magnifying the appeal of Voldemort's power.

The same hysteria about Islamism is unfolding before our eyes. But no strategy intended to defeat Islamism can succeed if Islamism itself and its violent expression in jihadism are not first named, isolated and understood.

From: Maajid Nawaz's article titled, 'How to Beat Islamic State', December 11th, 2015. ~ Maajid Nawaz

When I first raised the issue of the so-called Islamic State at the Munich Security Conference in February, speaking about its economy, its flexibility and pathology, people thought I was trying to scare them. But now we have experienced just that. If al-Qaida was version 2.0 of terror, then the Islamic State is version 5.0. ~ Ashraf Ghani

IS [Islamic State] has played a major role in helping Bashar al-Assad to reposition Syria on the international scene. Now, it is almost impossible to come up with a solution that would exclude him. The political game appears to be very cynical indeed. ~ Tariq Ramadan

Maybe it's the spy novelist in me looking for a future plot, but I hope the U.S. and its allies are thinking how to operate 'unconventionally' in Iraq and Syria in ways that undermine the Islamic State. ~ David Ignatius

We are all descended from cavemen who broke the skulls of their enemies with rocks for fun or profit. But that hardly mitigates the crimes of a man who does the same thing today. I see no problem judging the behavior of the Islamic State and its apologists from the vantage point of the West's high horse, because we've earned the right to sit in that saddle. ~ Jonah Goldberg

It is convenient for Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair to say the rise of the Islamic State has nothing to do with the Iraq War because that takes the culpability off their shoulders. The Islamic State is a product of the Iraq War. It took about a 100 years to build the Iraqi state, and the Americans and the British destroyed it in an afternoon. ~ Vijay Prashad

Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable: It is a hermit kingdom; few have gone there and returned. Baghdadi has spoken on camera only once. But his address, and the Islamic State's countless other propaganda videos and encyclicals, are online, and the caliphate's supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable. We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of - and headline player in - the imminent end of the world. ~ Anonymous

It's the deep, fundamental bedrock of hypocrisy upon which religion is founded. Consider: no creature can be said to worship if it does not possess free will. Free will, however, is FREE. And just by virtue of being free, is intractable and incalculable, a truly Godlike gift, the faculty that makes a state of freedom possible. To exist in a state of freedom is a wild, strange thing, and was clearly intended as such. But what to the religions do with this? They say, "Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us." The effrontery of it! God, who would not coerce a fly, is painted as a supreme slavemaster! In the fact of this, any creature with spirit must rebel, must serve God entirely of his own will and volition, or must not serve him at all, thus remaining true to himself and to the faculties God has given him. ~ Robert Sheckley

All those feminists who had hoped that women's liberation could be brought about by putting pressure on the state and thus getting more social welfare for women, or by demanding equal opportunities for women in the job market, particularly in the higher ranks of this market, or by increasing women's participation in political and other decision-making bodies, find their expectations shattered. They have to realize today that the fundamental democratic rights, the claim to equality and freedom, are also fair-weather rights, as far as women are concerned, and that these rights, in spite of the rhetoric of their universality, are suspended when the accumulation needs of capital require this. ~ Maria Mies

To state this more succinctly, awareness of the body's state influences how we organize our lives. Knowing your body strengthens your mind. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

Of course, I know everything that happens in Russia. But even at the most dangerous moment or the most negative moment now, it's still 10 times better than what it was in the communist state. ~ Mstislav Rostropovich

The classicist, and the naturalist who has much in common with him, refuse to see in the highest works of art anything but the exercise of judgement, sensibility, and skill. The romanticist cannot be satisfied with such a normal standard; for him art is essentially irrational - an experience beyond normality, sometimes destructive of normality, and at the very least evocative of that state of wonder which is the state of mind induced by the immediately inexplicable. ~ Herbert Read

In dunya, the image is always better than the reality. In Jennah, the Reality is better than any image ever could be. ~ Yasmin Mogahed

I've been divorced and I had to get back out there be single again and do some of that in the genuinely miserable state where you really do wonder what the hell is going on. And you feel like trying to have casual conversation with someone you don't know on the surface of the moon or something. ~ Hank Azaria

Tapping While Peeling, Back These Masks Stained With Stars…

This Ashtrays My Heart,
Colored In Filters Sucked Dry From The High, The Lipsticked & Famous,
The Lovers The Haters,
The Bent Or Those Who Live In The Cage…
With Vision Sealed Tight Denying All Light..
.Left Only With Assumption From A Judge In Sleep State... ~ L V HALL

I spoke on the phone with President Rouhani of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The two of us discussed our ongoing efforts to reach an agreement over Iran's nuclear program. While there will surely be important obstacles to moving forward and success is by no means guaranteed, I believe we can reach a comprehensive solution. ~ Barack Obama

Every cook must learn to rule the State. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Early in "Postulates of Linguistics," Deleuze and Guattari claim that, "the elementary unit of language ... is the order-word," which "not to be believe but to be obeyed" (ATP, 76). Perhaps the starkest example is the judge's sentence that condemns a criminal to death (80-81; 94). But the French for order-word, mot d'ordre, also refers to the political slogan, which is substantiated by Deleuze and Guattari's reference to Lenin's pamphlet "On Slogans" (83). Both of these examples indicate how closely their linguistics aligns with the rhetorical theory of symbolic action. Rhetoric is excellent at studying those acts that cause incorporeal transformations, which as changes in a state of affairs that do not directly alter its materiality (80-88). ~ Anonymous

The lucid dream, located as it is at a crossroads between worlds and states of consciousness, places the magician in a unique position to influence the delicate balance of consciousness and the interplay it has on matter in the waking state, and is thus an opportunity to test one's ability in the art of adjusting the mutable fabric of Maya. ~ Zeena Schreck

School is where children spend most of their time, and it is where we lay the foundation for healthy habits. That's why New Jersey is the first state to adopt a comprehensive school nutrition policy that bans candy, soda, and other junk food. ~ Richard J. Codey

My father was a sergeant with the Connecticut state police. My mother was a hairstylist. ~ Michael Bergin

It may be said that because woman recognizes the awful toll she is made to pay to the Church, State, and the home, she wants suffrage to set herself free. That may be true of the few; the majority of suffragists repudiate utterly such blasphemy. On the contrary, they insist always that it is woman suffrage which will make her a better Christian and homekeeper, a staunch citizen of the State. Thus suffrage is only a means of strengthening the omnipotence of the very Gods that woman has served from time immemorial. ~ Emma Goldman

For those who trust in the Divine all things are moving towards an everlasting state of happiness, and no matter what happens at any time to them, it contributes to that state. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

The revelers in the State House, however, had no intention of retiring for the night. Instead they emptied into the streets and massed outside the telegraph office, shouting "New York 50,000 majority for Lincoln - whoop, whoop hurrah!" The entire city "went off like one immense cannon report, with shouting from houses, shouting from stores, shouting from house tops, and shouting everywhere. ~ Harold Holzer

But since the downfall of the mythological hypothesis an interpretation of the dream has been wanting. The conditions of its origin; its relationship to our psychical life when we are awake; its independence of disturbances which, during the state of sleep, seem to compel notice; its many peculiarities repugnant to our waking thought; the incongruence between its images and the feelings they engender; then the dream's evanescence, the way in which, on awakening, our thoughts thrust it aside as something bizarre, and our reminiscences mutilating or rejecting it - all these and many other problems have for many hundred years demanded answers which up till now could never have been satisfactory. Before all there is the question as to the meaning of the dream, a question which is in itself double-sided. There is, firstly, the psychical significance of the dream, its position with regard to the psychical processes, as to a possible biological function; secondly, has the dream a meaning - can sense be made of each single dream as of other mental syntheses? ~ Sigmund Freud

New Rule: The rest of the world can go back to being completely jealous of America. Our majority white country just freely elected a black president, something no other democracy has ever done. Take that Canada! Where's your nubian warrior president? Your head of state is a boring white dude named Steven Harper, and mine is a kick-ass black ninja named Barack Hussein Obama! ~ Bill Maher

Our children should be taught to beware of everything foreign and not to disclose any state or party secrets to foreigners ... for foreigners are eyes for their countries, and some of them are counterrevolutionary instruments [in the hands of imperialism]. ~ Saddam Hussein

It is in the nature of helping and counselling to be a process moving towards something rather than arriving at a state of completion. ~ Pete Sanders

Privacy is a protection from the unreasonable use of state and corporate power. But that is, in a sense, a secondary thing. In the first instance, privacy is the statement in words of a simple understanding, which belongs to the instinctive world rather than the formal one, that some things are the province of those who experience them and not naturally open to the scrutiny of others: courtship and love, with their emotional nakedness; the simple moments of family life; the appalling rawness of grief. That the state and other systems are precluded from snooping on these things is important - it is a strong barrier between the formal world and the hearth, extended or not - but at root privacy is a simple understanding: not everything belongs to everyone. ~ Nick Harkaway

For my family and Howard's partner, who is like family, for 10 years we were in a state of shock. It takes time to appreciate fully what was going on then. That's connected because post-9/11 New York is so completely different from the way it was and the counterculture movement going on before then was so remarkable; I think people are appreciating it a lot more now. ~ Aaron Brookner

By way of parenthesis let me say that this hand on the tomb has a lovely lesson for all those unfortunate members of Christ who have fallen into mortal sin. In them, Jesus lies dead - as dead as he was on this Sabbath of twenty centuries ago. But on them, as on this tomb, the hand of Mary, the Refuge of Sinners, rests, awaiting and praying for the Resurrection of Christ within them! May those who are in such a state fell that hand as they read this book, and bring Christ to life within them by asking Mary to help them make a perfect act of contrition, which is an act of love, this moment. She can grant such a grace; for she is Mediatrix of all grace! ~ M. Raymond

I am happy and proud that during one year of presidency, my initiatives have been strongly supported by the people and society and we have launched the process of vitally important state reforms. ~ Dalia Grybauskaite

But what is this state? It is like a morning of spring, varied in its life and beauty, yet one and entire.
All the conflicts and contradictions of life are reconciled; knowledge, love and action harmonized; pleasure and pain become one in beauty, enjoyment and renunciation equal in goodness; the breach between the finite and the infinite fills with love and overflows; every moment carries its message of the eternal; the formless appears to us in the form of the flower, of the fruit; the boundless takes us up in his arms as a father and walks by our side as a friend.
While yet we have not attained the internal harmony, and the wholeness of our being, our life remains a life of habits. The world still appears to us as a machine, to be mastered where it is useful, to be guarded against where it is dangerous, and never to be known in its full fellowship with us, alike in its physical nature and in its spiritual life and beauty. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

I don't want a one-state solution. I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution. But for that, circumstances have to change. ~ Benjamin Netanyahu

Today's youth has not learned 'to see humor in misfortune,' because they have hardly known what misfortune is. They are being urged to do the opposite: they are being asked to declare a state of mourning and to make sadness and protest the rule in the midst of what must be considered--in view of the true state of the world--an incomparable example of well-being, justice, freedom, and prosperity. ~ Julián Marías

The current version of ... separation of church and state says you can be salt, and you can be light, but only inside the four walls of the church. ~ David Barton

I may not be funny. I may not be a singer. I may not be a damn seamstress. I may have diabetes. I may have really bad vision. I may have one leg. I may not know how to read. I may not know who the vice president is. I may technically be an alien of the state. I may have a Zune. I may not know Excel. I may be two 9 year olds in a trench coat. I may not have full control of my bowels. I may drive a '94 Honda Civic. I may not "get" cameras. I may dye my hair with Hydrogen Peroxide. I may be afraid of trees. I may be on fire right now. But I'm a fierce queen. ~ Justin Johnson

There's a half-conscious state you enter when you're actually generating prose, and you are simply a better writer in that place. In fact it's the only place where you even are a writer. ~ John Jeremiah Sullivan

My weight is a bit like the state of my bank account; if I don't check the balance I can't get upset. ~ Ruth Saberton

No mind ever grew fat on a diet of novels. The pleasure which they occasionally offer is far too heavily paid for: they undermine the finest characters. They teach us to think ourselves into other men's places. Thus we acquire a taste for change. The personality becomes dissolved in pleasing figments of imagination. The reader learns to understand every point of view. Willingly he yields himself to the pursuit of other people's goals and loses sight of his own. Novels are so many wedges which the novelist, an actor with his pen, inserts into the closed personality of the reader. The better he calculates the size of the wedge and the strength of the resistance, so much the more completely does he crack open the personality of the victim. Novels should be prohibited by the State. ~ Elias Canetti

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

At times, Zen does get into some Buddhist Cosmology. Nishijima Roshi, my main teacher would talk about that and almost every time immediately say that it was only one way of looking at it. Whenever addressing realms of Heaven or Hell, he'd also address that it was just a psychological state. ~ Brad Warner

The mystery of being human and, certainly, of being a Catholic lies in our embracing together the imperfect state known as the human condition. First and foremost, if we could ever be perfect or do things perfectly, we would eliminate mystery, an essential ingredient in the good life and the spiritual life. ~ Eugene Kennedy

I ask only one thing of skeptics: don't bring up Soviet Russia, please. That horrible example of State Capitalism has nothing to do with what I, and other libertarian socialists, would offer as an alternative to the present system. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

God doesn't need to be a witness. He doesn't need to go to a court, does he? 'You' are the one who has to attain a witness state, so that there's no karma bondage. And 'God' only keeps on 'seeing'! ~ Dada Bhagwan

In my own city of Los Angeles, everyone will gladly pay a hundred dollars a month for cable television, yet would roar in protest if forced to pay that much for life's elixir piped directly into their homes. When Governor Schwarzenegger declared a state of drought emergency, I studied my water bill closely for the first time in my life. For two months of clean drinking water, snared from faraway sources, and delivered to my house by one of the world's most expensive and elaborate engineering schemes, I was charged $20.67. I spend more on postage stamps.

If only everyone could indulge such ignorant bliss… ~ Laurence C. Smith