Words matter. These are the best Ameen Rihani Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
In a true democracy is the cure for most of our social and political ills, but a few of them must remain to keep us going.
Society may be likened to a rod, which only a just government can balance properly.
When learning was monopolized by the monks in the Middle Ages, people specialized only in warfare and statecraft. And even these were not altogether free from the scholastic influence.
All things, good and evil, come out, it seems, of the East. The Illuminati, like the Ismailites, dealt in allegories; and like the Mazdakites, they played with fire.
Not in our make-up, to be sure – not in the pose which is preceded by the tantaras of a trumpet – do the essential traits in our character first reveal themselves. But truly in the little things the real self is exteriorised.
There is no such thing as disappointment for those who continue to cherish the selflessness of which is born the noblest inner self. There is no such thing as failure for those who invest in the potentialities of the Ideal of the Soul.
An idealist is ahead of his time only in the sense that he is articulate. The same is true of a nation. For even primitive people, even effete races have a message for those above or below them. The heritage of the Ideal, however small can not be exhausted.
Experience is knowledge; but knowledge, when it is sought only as a material resource, is not always a blessing. Experience is wisdom; but wisdom, with those who lack vision, is not always power. Experience is tolerance; but tolerance, when it is induced by apathy, is not in the least a virtue.
Old Arabic books, printed in Bulaq, generally have a broad margin wherein a separate work, independent of the text, adds gloom to the page.
Autocracy is a government of the few from above; Bolshevism is a government of the few from below.
Deficiencies in individuals, as in States, have their value and import. Indeed, that sublime impulse of perfectibility, always vivacious, always working under various forms and with one underlying purpose, would be futile without them, and fatuous.
The most important in the history of nations and individuals was once the most trivial, and vice versa. The plebeian, who is called today the ‘man in the street,’ can never see and understand the significance of the hidden seed of things, which in time must develop or die.
Like the seasons of the year, like history, truth also repeats itself. But we seldom recognize it when great poets or true artists – the prophets and the priests of our day – present it to us in garments spick and span, following the fashion of the age, the slant of its fancy, the turn and temper of its mind.
We are all idealists in that we are ever discontented with the present state of the Ego and the World.
Revolution is glorified by intellectuals, apotheosized by poets, sanctified by visionaries, and bled white by politicians.
