Ameen Rihani Quotes
My first wish is to be simple in my actions, truthful in my speech, honest in my opinions, and natural in my behavior. In other words, I want to be clean in mind, heart, and body.
Ignorance and fear are twins whose mother is slavery and whose father is oppression, and the mentality of the whole family is that of slaves.
I give priority to up-bringing over education because the ultimate goal of up-bringing is morals, and we have a more urgent need for morals than for knowledge.
The religious fanatic drew a small circle and left me, the infidel, outside it. However, I, with the help of love, won over him - I drew a large circle and included him.
The West for me means ambition, the East contentment. My heart is ever in one, my soul in the other.
Fire and light compete today in the East. But there is a lot of green firewood in this fire, and there is a lot of smoke in that light.
Our Phoenician ancestors never left anything they undertook unfinished. Consider what they accomplished in their days, and the degree of culture they attained.
Self-reliance leads to intellectual independence. Each man must think for himself, must train the mind to think, must habituate the soul to observe and analyze.
Breathless and unharmed, we emerge from the mazes of metaphysics and psychology where man and the soul are playing hide-and-seek.
I am the East. I have philosophies, I have religions, who would exchange them for airplanes?
... And if Europe gives Arabia a railway, Arabia gives Europe an idea - which I think balances the account.
I am for reformation by emigration. The emigration of the mind before the revolution of the state. The soul and mind must be free before one has a right to be a member of a free government.
Knowledge is one of our direst needs. But it is insufficient on its own. If knowledge was stripped from true up-bringing, it would increase man's strength, but not his morals.
I want to accept all the difficulties that face me in life with perseverance and patience.
If I were capable of assisting someone, I would do it in a manner that would cause the person seeking assistance to work, so he assists himself.
What is life without its angles of difficulty and defeat, and its tip of triumph and power?
True knowledge is power; but in order to feel at home with it, we must be constitutionally qualified. And if we are not, it is likely to give the soul such a twist as to deform it forever.
The broader and higher aspects of life are international.... There is a goal towards which all nations gravitate, and there is a common ground upon which all nations meet.
True up-bringing is restricted to two types of welfare; the welfare of the body and that of the mind.
Mutual tolerance is the stepping stone to mutual respect. A hospitable mind is the key to a neighboring or an alien spirit, looked by dogma and guarded by tradition.
We must strive to form a comprehensive sublime nationalism whose first principal is national geographic unity and must strengthen this unity with deeds not with words.
... However, there is another method, other than revolution, which is that of natural evolution, or rather the intellectual method with all its modes of education and up-bringing.
I proceeded in my national mission, seeking to pave the way for an understanding between His Majesty and the other ruling princes of Arabia.
We have to dissolve all the denominations in order to form from them the greater denomination of the homeland.
Yes, I am calling for an intellectual revolution that sweeps away the corruption, absurdity and error, which prevail in morals, customs, traditions, and doctrines.
Training the will in trivial and grave matters increases its strength and flexibility, and enables man to constantly strive and persevere.
You teacher, teach your pupils freedom in thought and deed, honesty in thought and deed, and tolerance in thought and deed.
I deposit in many banks including the bank of wisdom. The more I draw on my accounts, no matter how big the sum, the bigger my balance becomes
Had courage, wisdom, and reason always prevailed in people, there would not have been oppressions and oppressors.
I renounce falsehood, whatsoever be the guise it assumes, and I embrace truth, wheresoever I find it.
Like matter itself, an ideal is mutable, but indestructible. It does not die; it only undergoes a change.
Foreign culture is as necessary to the spirit of a nation as is foreign commerce to its industries.
Only a well-rounded intellect, a spirit nourished in the eternal sources of intelligence and culture, of justice and wisdom, is a safeguard against both indifference and skepticism.
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.