“It is not Islam that oppresses Muslim women, it is the lack of knowledge or the lack of application of that knowledge that oppresses.”

“The customers, mostly well-to-do vacationers with little knowledge of turquoise, were using a standard principle—a stereotype—to guide their buying: “expensive = good.”

“How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows—this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That’s what things look like in our cities at present”

“Without training, they lacked knowledge.Without knowledge, they lacked confidence. Without confidence, they lacked victory.”

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.”

“Knowledge without labor is profitless. Knowledge with labor is genius.”

“Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.”