Zahi Hawass Quotes

Mystery is a resource, like coal or gold, and its preservation is a fine thing.

People protect what they love.

They are all very beautiful, but for the time it is not appropriate to leave them visible. Clean them and cover them over again carefully, so that they may survive until they are revealed to view in the future.

You re being handed a national treasure. Your main responsibility is that whenever you may leave it, it still remains a national treasure.

I want the Dead Sea, like Masada, to be part of UNESCO's world heritage.

Ships are like children: they need individual attention.

A great challenge: stop ruining the garden which God has entrusted to us so that all may enjoy it.

Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being.

The human being is not the lord of beings, but the shepherd of Being.

I have priorities. Maintaining my daughter is my first.

We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect.

I think it's important to watch out for our environment and to be careful.

When we find something new at Giza, we announce it to the world. The Sphinx and the Pyramids are world treasures. We are the guardian's of these treasures, but they belong to the world.

Yes, I'm your governor now. I'll take care of you.

You don't let a historic site rot.

It's one thing to plant a tree, it's another to make it survive. If you know you are not going to take care of that tree, don't bother

Whoever guards the fig tree shall eat its fruit.

I really don’t make history; I preserve it.

Take this not for a threatening for I scorn to threaten any but my equals; but as an admonition from him, who, by nature and duty, has most care of your preservation and prosperity.

The inescapable price of liberty is an ability to preserve it from destruction.

It is for all these buildings, therefore, of all times and styles, that we plead, and call upon those who have to deal with them to put Protection in the place of Restoration, to stave off decay by daily care, to prop a perilous wall or mend a leaky roof by such means as are obviously meant for support or covering, and show no pretence of other art, and otherwise to resist all tampering with either the fabric or ornament of the building as it stands; if it has become inconvenient for its present use, to raise another building rather than alter or enlarge the old one; in fine to treat our ancient buildings as monuments of a bygone art, created by bygone manners, that modern art cannot meddle with without destroying.

You only protect what you love, and you only love what you know.

Lebanon is a small country, and we have a saying: as long as you know your size, you know, just try to protect what you have.

I'm looking at looting photos from space, and there are people putting their lives on the line every day protecting their heritage. I call these people the real culture heroes.

With population pressures, urbanization, and modernization encroaching, we're in a race against time. Why not use the most advanced tools we have to map, quantify, and protect our past?