Shirin Farhad Quotes

It is not important whether what he is chanting is true or not, whether you believe in it or not. Your decision to chant along with him is no measure of your commitment to justice or freedom or whatever lofty principle is at hand. Sometimes, radical slogans are a trap. They are shouted by infiltrators so that a group of students protesting a press crackdown can be depicted as seeking to overthrow the regime. Sometimes they are not traps at all but the frustrated stand of a brave person. But how are you to know? Your objective is to avoid being a pawn, to avoid getting dragged into trouble because you are curious, or believe you are seeing history being made." They ~ Shirin Ebadi

Fort somehow turned the symbol of nerdiness into a visual aphrodisiac - Spanish fly in the form of solid black frames. ~ Shirin Dubbin

I am the voice of the people in Iran whose voices are silent and whose demands cannot be heard by the rest of the world. ~ Shirin Ebadi

Any person who pursues human rights in Iran must live with fear from birth to death, but I have learned to overcome my fear. ~ Shirin Ebadi

I have never been convinced throughout my life that one needs to be imitating others. I even tell my daughters not to look at me as a model. ~ Shirin Ebadi

Art is no crime. It's every artist's responsibility to make art that is meaningful ~ Shirin Neshat

Beautiful woman wrapped in chadors, with huge machine guns in their hands. Brilliant, shocking, amazingly contradictory images. They compelled me to deeply investigate these ideas. ~ Shirin Neshat

Terrorism is based on two major pillars: One is injustice, and the other is a certainty of attitude, the notion that their version of the story is the correct one. ~ Shirin Ebadi

If you do a single thing - and especially if there is a lot of money in that single thing - you should put a 'Welcome, Robots!' doormat outside your office," wrote technology expert Farhad Manjoo in Slate. "They're coming for you. ~ Robert Wachter

I maintain that nothing useful and lasting can emerge from violence. ~ Shirin Ebadi

It is totally unacceptable for a government to interfere in the internal affairs of another government and send aid, money, and weapons, to the people who are against a certain regime in another country. ~ Shirin Ebadi

No American soldier should be allowed to set foot on Iranian soil, regardless of the criticism we have of the Iranian government. ~ Shirin Ebadi

While living in exile I have become the loudspeaker for the people of Iran. ~ Shirin Ebadi

I'm really interested in social justice, and if an artist has a certain power of being heard and voicing something important, it's right to do it. It could still be done in such a way that it's not aggressive or overly didactic. I'm trying to find that form. ~ Shirin Neshat

The younger generation is essentially idealistic. This applies to the Iranian youth as well. In addition, the youth in Iran face certain difficulties ... the Iranian youth need more freedom. They are struggling for more freedom and democracy. This commands great respect. ~ Shirin Ebadi

Under the Iranian code, the worth of a woman's life equals half of a man's, a point that often leads to grotesque legal judgments that effectively punish the victims. In this instance, the judge ruled that the 'blood money' for the two men was worth more than the life of the murdered nine-year-old girl, and he demanded that her family come up with thousands of dollars to finance their executions. ~ Shirin Ebadi

James Buchan's The Persian Bride combines a moving love story, a political thriller, and a history of modern Iran in a beautiful novel about the relationship of two people caught up in the Iranian revolution: John Pitt, a young man from England who arrives in Isfahan, Iran, in 1974, and seventeen-year-old Shirin, one of John's students, whose father is a general in the shah's army. ~ Nancy Pearl

When the gravity of death first touched me, I'd found preoccupation with the minutiae of daily life meaningless. If we ultimately die, and turn to dust in the ground, should it ever truly upset us if the floor hasn't been swept quite recently enough. ~ Shirin Ebadi

I'm an artist, I'm not an activist. ~ Shirin Neshat

I want to take my American friends back to the end of World War II, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was formulated. A group of thinkers met to come up with ways and means to prevent yet another war. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt played a crucial role in assembling this group of people. And that is why the name of the United States is synonymous with the cause of human rights around the world. ~ Shirin Ebadi

You are a girl, Shirin. Girls don't run around naked.'Why?'They just don't. ~ Renita D'Silva

Every Iranian artist, in one form or another, is political. Politics have defined our lives. ~ Shirin Neshat

When you vote, vote for those who are not warmongers, and vote for those who respect human rights. When you see a president who doesn't respect human rights, don't vote for that person. ~ Shirin Ebadi

How can you say that?" he said, and I heard his voice break. "How can you even think that? I want this more than I've ever wanted anything. I want everything with you," he said. "I want all of it with you. I want you. I want this forever. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Being political is an integral part of being Iranian. Our lives are defined by politics. ~ Shirin Neshat

There is no "true Islam," just different interpretations. ~ Shirin Ebadi

Magical realism allows an artist like myself to inject layers of meaning without being obvious. In American culture, where there is freedom of expression, this approach may seem forced, unnecessary and misunderstood. But this system of communication has become very Iranian. ~ Shirin Neshat

Everyone's condition is different, and the way that each person lives his or her life is different. ~ Shirin Ebadi

Democracy doesn't recognize east or west; democracy is simply people's will. Therefore, I do not acknowledge that there are various models of democracy; there is just democracy itself. ~ Shirin Ebadi

There is a verse [in the Koran] that says God swears by time. Anything you gain in life, you pay for with your time. Time is the most important thing that has been given to man. ~ Shirin Ebadi

Contrary to what certain governments say, human rights are universal. Arbitrary detention, torture and discrimination hurt the human dignity of anybody, whatever his or her country of origin, religion, descent, or any other ground. ~ Shirin Ebadi

Those who don't understand any language other than the language of force and violence don't respect human dignity. They seek violence because they will be irrelevant without it. We should not go their way. ~ Shirin Ebadi

In my memoir, I wanted to introduce American women to Iranian women and our lives. I'm not from the highest echelons of society, nor the lowest. I'm a women who is a lawyer, who is a professor at a university, who won the Nobel Peace Prize. At the same time, I cook. And even when I'm about to go to prison, one of the first things I do is to make enough food and put it in the fridge for my family. ~ Shirin Ebadi

I got lost in the feel of him, in the heat of his skin, in the way his body shook when he broke away and I felt like I was dreaming, like I'd forgotten how to think.
(...) We broke apart, fighting to breathe, holding on to each other like we were drowning, like we'd been lost, left for dead in a very large expanse of sea. ~ Tahereh Mafi