I think that the growing government control of the press is very clear. Turkey is still not a dictatorship, there is still some freedom of the press, but I think it's moving in the wrong direction.

Islam and Islamic values now have a level of immunity from comment and criticism in the Western world that Christianity has lost and Judaism has never had.

The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic Law.

The general perception, in much of the Middle East, is that the United States is an unreliable friend and a harmless enemy. I think we want to give the exact opposite impression.

A remarkable feature of Islam is that it gives dignity even to the humblest illiterate peasants. It gives them a certain human dignity which one doesn't find in other societies.

Islam does give human dignity, certainly. The point I wanted to make is that it is great foolishness to try to impose our notions of democracy. They have their own traditions.

Islam explicitly rejects dictatorship and there are no traditions of the Prophet or passages in the Qur'an which clearly give dictators this support.

Christians and Muslims share the belief that they are the fortunate recipient of the final God message.

Not being interested in other cultures is the normal state of mankind.

America is harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.

The masses have yet to realize that generating your own electricity is a potentially hazardous activity to engage in.

Comparisons are like rigid fingers—eager to point at a subject but unwilling to grasp it.

They came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose.

Don't bother people for help without first trying to solve the problem yourself.

I expect celibacy of any person that is not married.

In most cases, energy is lost in little games of manipulation, in little struggles of will, in the attempts to possess others, to wrap them up, to delude them, to shine them on.

Born to lose. Live to win.

Life-and-death. Lifedeath. One event. One short event. Don't forget.

By 2003, every fool was getting into real estate. The checkout girl at my local supermarket handed me her newly printed real estate agent business card.

I kind of put myself in this mindset where time doesn't really exist that much. There is no past or future. I just try to stay really in the present.