Alija Izetbegović

“Yasunari Kawabata, the Japanese Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1968, committed suicide in 1971. Two years earlier, in 1969, another great Japanese novelist, Yukio Mishima, ended his life in the same way. Since 1895 ,thirteen Japanese novelists and writers have committed suicide, including the author of the Rashomon, Ryunosuko Akutagawa, in 1927. That "continuous tragedy" of Japanese culture during 70 years coincides with the penetration of Western civilization and materialistic ideas into the traditional culture of Japan. Whatever it be, for the poets and the writers of tragedies, civilization will always have an inhuman face and be a threat to humanity. A year before his death, Kawabata wrote "men are separated from each other by a concrete wall that obstructs any circulation of love. Nature is smothered in the name of progress." In the novel The Snow Country, published in 1937 , Kawabata places man's loneliness and alienation in the modern world at the very focus of his reflections.”

“Islam's middle position can be recognized by the fact that Islam has always been attacked from the two opposite directions: from the side of religion, that is too natural, actual, and tuned to the world; and from the side of science that it contains religious and mystical elements. There is only one Islam, but like man, it has both soul and body.”

“It is known that the Quran leaves an analytical reader the impression of disarrangement, and that it seems to be a compound of diverse elements. Nevertheless, the Quran is life, not literature. Islam is a way of living rather than a way of thinking. The only authentic comment of the Quran can be life, and as we know, it was the life of the prophet Muhammad. Islam is in its written form (the Quran) may seem disorderly, but in the life of Muhammad it proves itself to be a natural union of love and force, the sublime and the real, the divine and the human. This explosive compound of religion and politics produced enormous force in the life of the peoples who accepted it. In one moment, Islam has coincided with the very essence of life.”

“In some socialist states well-performed work is rewarded with moral stimulants instead of material ones. However, the moral stimulants cannot be explained by materialistic philosophy. It is the same case with the appeals for humanism, justice, equality, freedom, human rights, and so forth, which are all of religious origin. Certainly, everybody has the right to live as he thinks best, including the right not to be consistent with his own pattern. Still, to understand the world correctly, it is important to know the true origin of meaning and of the ideas ruling the world.”

“Scientists or thinkers who try to discover the truth cannot find that higher life by thinking alone, but their own life, spent in search for the truth and neglecting the physical living, is just that higher form of human existence.”

“We have no rational evidence that there exits another world, but we have a clear feeling that man does not exist only to produce and to consume.”

“Dualism is the closest human feeling, but it is not necessarily the highest human philosophy. On the contrary, all great philosophies have been monistic. Man experiences the world dualistically, but monism is the essence of all human thinking. Philosophy disagrees with dualism. However, this fact does not mean too much, because life, being superior to thought, may not be judged by it. In reality, since we are human beings, we are living two realities. We can deny these two worlds, but we cannot escape from them. Life does not depend too much on our understanding of it.”

“There are only three integral views of the world: the religious, the materialistic, and the Islamic. They reflect three elemental possibilities (conscience, nature, and man), each of them manifesting itself as Christianity, materialism, and Islam. All variety of ideologies, philosophies, and teachings from the oldest time up to now can be reduced to one of these three basic world views. The first takes as its starting point the existence of the spirit, the second the existence of matter, and the third the simultaneous existence of spirit and matter. If only matter exists, materialism would be the only consequent philosophy. On the contrary, if the spirit exists then man also exists, and man's life would be senseless without a kind of religion and morality. Islam is the name for the unity of spirit and matter, the highest form of which is man himself. The human life is complete only if it includes both the physical and the spiritual desires of the human being. All man's failures are either because of the religious denial of man's biological needs of the materialistic denial of man's spiritual desires.”

“the soul aches as much as the body.there are days when all the scars , all the old and long forgotten hurts" lights up", just like old injuries before winter or bones hurt from blows you have collected in a long life and only forgotten for a short time. in those days you are bad tempered and absorbed in yourself, in your soul whose wound reopened only to remind you that nothing is lost,nothing vanishes, least of all pains and bad memories.they just whither away for a while, withdraw into an unknown depth, just like they will this time and you will put them behind you, until the next time.”

“These countries formally achieved independence ,but they didn't achieve real freedom, since freedom of any kind is primarily spiritual.the independence of a people which has not first won this is soon reduced to an anthem and a flag , two very minor factors for true independence”

“People complain that life is short,for me it seems very long.”

“What we call happiness is sometimes the accordance between our life and circumstances,our biography and history ,our personal aspirations and historical currents .If i look at things that way,I can say : I was born too early to be happy.But birth is one of the many things we do not get to choose.It's part of our destiny.If I were offered life again,I would refuse it. But ,If i had to be born again. I would choose my life”

“I'm also hurt by injustice. But don't forget that we have passed through hell ,and remained sane people inspite of everything.This is our victory.”

“Troubles don't come alone,they like to arrive in groups”

“When a man is ill,he has only one wish -to gain health,and when he does -then come a hundred wishes and he turns even unhappier than when he was lying sick in bed”

“I wouldn't wish now to digress into the philosophy of the relationship between life and logic ,but we shall agree that it was a good thing we were not wholly logical.For if we had been ,we would have surrendered at the end of April or the beginning of May 1992.The entire logic of the world was against us at that time.And now we have these illogical people who say: we have no food,we have no bullets ,but we'll fight and win.what is one to do with them? They are good,courageous people.”

“one soldier walked infront of the troop and asked me :"President ,will there be injustice when freedom comes?", I was surprised by the question , but I answered :"Yes,unfortunately there will be injustice and you will have to fight against it just like you do now against your enemies ".”

“In history, good intentions do not always make good consequences”

“I do not believe in the unlimited power of the majority,because tyranny of the majority is tyranny like any other.”

“Unfortunately, evil will never be wholly defeated.Mankind is faced with a continual struggle against evil. We believe that this is where the meaning of our lives and of human history lies.”

“And slavery is the worst of all outcomes ,worse than war”

“you see how strangely history repeats itself.Here and now in Bosnia we are seeing images like those of the second world war. I remember that war very well.I was 16 when it began ,and 20 when it ended . Then,too, there were Chentniks and Ustasha,and they are again.the difference is that these Chetniks are worse than the Chetniks of that time,these Ustasha worse than those Ustasha.I can say this with complete confidence ,because Ustasha of that time didn't destroy the Old Bridge ,nor the mosques of Mostar ,and these have done so.”

“Was there any point in those attempts at reconciliation ?Even today,I think there was. Attempts of that kind are never pointless.”

“Nonetheless, out of a life of 60 or 70 years, three years is more than a thousand days and a thousand nights”

“life is not short, I find it long.”

“Pretjerano čitanje ne čini nas pametnijim. Neki ljudi jednostavno 'gutaju' knjige. Oni to čine bez onih neophodnih intervala razmišljanja, koji su potrebni da se pročitano 'svari', preradi, usvoji, razumije. Kod čitanja lični doprinos je potreban kao što je pčeli potreban 'unutrašnji' rad, pa i vrijeme, da sakupljeni cvijetni prah pretvori u med.”

“الحضارة تُعلِّم أما الثقافة فتُنور. تحتاج الأولي الى تعلم, اما الثانية فتحتاج الى تأمل”