Riz Ahmed Quotes

I'm trying to change the world.

I am unknown because I've avoided the limelight so that I could serve. In the case of Donald Trump, he has avoided service so that he could seek the limelight.

I'm an entrepreneur. 'Ambitious' is my middle name.

Just as he who gives his life to serve a great idea is admirable, he who avails himself of a great idea to serve his personal hopes of glory and power is abominable, even if he too risks his life.

I have always wanted to be a catalyst for bringing about positive change, inspiring others to choose goodness.

I'm inclined to think that, because it's such an awful life, that politicians do go into it for the best reasons. I mean, some may love the sound of their own voice. But it's such a wearying life, you've got to be impelled by some desire to leave the world a better place than when you came into it.

It's not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.

I don't have to run the Peace Corps. I could live without seeing my picture in the newspapers and without being interviewed.

The truth is that all civic and social change is friction. Politics is friction. The only way you can bend the arc of history is to create that kind of friction, which is something that makes most people incredibly uncomfortable but which, for whatever reason, because of my upbringing or because of my genetics, is something that doesn't bug me.

Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.

I was taught in school that I have to look out for number one. That was against everything that I intuitively felt.

The one thing I witnessed over and over were these pretty young people who would throw themselves into a cause larger than themselves and believe they could change the world.

The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile.

Men who have greatness within them don't go into politics.

Politicians are half ego and half humility.

Take egoism out and you would castrate the benefactors. Luther, Mirabeau, Napoleon, John Adams; and our nearer eminent public servants,—[Horace] Greeley, Theodore Parker, [Henry] Ward Beecher, Horace Mann, [William Lloyd] Garrison would lose their vigour.

The change in the world is always brought by one man, whom we call "the leader". Who has the vision and the force not only to make people dream, but to reach and live that dream. He is intelligent enough to foresee tomorrow. He is selfless and courageous to the extent of being ready to sacrifice everything and express truth even if it defames him. People fellow him where he takes them. He is the one who accelerates history …

All the movements or crusades depend for their inception and early momentum on the personality of some individual man or woman. Someone must care tremendously and give unstintingly of themselves before an idea takes sufficient root in a number of people's minds to go forward without some tangible personality to give it interest.

If you want to change a country, you're going to be bumped every now and then.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That's not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

All of philanthropy is harnessing that urge to have your name on something, and using it for good.

The thing that drives people more often than not is they genuinely feel that they can make a difference. So that means there are nice people in politics.

I always had a desire to see change and be part of it.

If I can, for whatever reason, inspire and motivate people, that's a good thing.

Zinedine Zidane knows how to deal with me.