Tariq Ramadan Quotes

I think the language that we use in dealing with one another is very important. And even if I am called upon to bring out some money to support a regime, and I am entitled to say I do not like what that regime does and obviously I am not going to put money there - you cannot really say this is wrong or this is unreasonable.

Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.

I think that critiquing the myths of our society and helping people find their way through them is a very important thing. It's a theme that goes through all of my work.

I think morality is more important than ever before. As we gain more power, the question of what we do with it becomes more and more crucial, and we are very close to really having divine powers of creation and destruction. The future of the entire ecological system and the future of the whole of life is really now in our hands. And what to do with it is an ethical question and also a scientific question.

Is anyone really surprised that Warren, who is the ultimate embodiment of concentrated decision-making power, picked somebody [Bill and Melinda Gates] who he thinks is like him in many important ways? It was a noble and sensible decision.

If you think your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based upon faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting or distorting the minds of the young in what is called 'education.'

Often in life, the most important question we can ask ourselves is: do we really have the problem we think we have?

For me science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects.

Philosophy rests on a proposition that whatever is is right. Preaching begins by assuming that whatever is is wrong.

It is necessary to remember, as we think critically about domination, that we all have the capacity to act in ways that oppress, dominate, wound (whether or not that power is institutionalized). It is necessary to remember that it is first the potential oppressor within that we must resist – the potential victim within that we must rescue – otherwise we cannot hope for an end to domination, for liberation.

I like good ideas. I don't want just do something for it's own sake to bother people, but if I can bother them with a logical argument about something they have agreed to in society simplistically - like children are sacred, the cult of the child, this cult of professional parenthood, and of course religion, and respect for policemen and the law, and all of these untouchable areas. I like attacking those beliefs, but in with good sound thinking, and an unusual approach.

I don't watch TV. I think that tends to polarize us and diminish important issues.

Being busy is a form of laziness - lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.

I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.

I think it's important that we run that tension between the way things are, in terms of the way we're governed, and the way we sort of become complacent.

I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for... Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse; its social goals are noncoercive knowledge produced in the interests of human freedom.

Some [people] may be "servants of the power structure," but that has to be shown. I think it often can be shown, but the burden of proof is on the critic who puts forth that thesis in particular cases.

'What is' is more important than 'what should be.' Too many people are looking at 'what is' from a position of thinking 'what should be'.

Being an atheist makes someone a clearer thinking, fairer person. They [atheists] are not doing things to be rewarded in heaven; they're doing things because they're right, because they live by a moral code.

If I tell the audience what they should think, then I am robbing them of their own imagination and their own capacity of deciding what's important to them.

I do think it's important not to be absolutely sure, so sure that you can't reinvent yourself in some way, or at least rediscover the truth of why you think what you think, and not just take it as an assumption.

The most important step in getting a job done is the recognition of the problem. Once I recognize a problem I usually can think of someone who can work it out better than I could.

I think it's much more important to know the truth than it is to make money on it.

I wanted to make people think of a totally different way of living from that which we, educated people, live. I would absolutely not want anyone to find it beautiful or good without a thought.