Mohsin Hamid Quotes

The working-class black Southern Christian culture I come from still nurtures me, and I mean directly, daily.

Grief, no matter where it comes from, can only be resolved by connecting to other people.

All culture must have arisen from cult.

I'll always stand by my Gypsy roots, and I'll always help out one of my own.

Secular humanists can sit around and talk about their love of humanity, but it doesn't stack up against a two-millennium-old funeral high mass.

Men will sooner surrender their rights than their customs.

Societies perish when people forget where they come from.

Loneliness is not a problem in traditional societies. People spend their lives in or near the place where they were born, and they remain surrounded by relatives and childhood companions.

Most importantly, I realize the value of the other people - the extended family - the other people within my community, my cultures: my teachers and the other people I call Auntie, Uncle, Godfather, Godbrother, whatever. These are people who pulled you in and made you part of their lives and their homes.

A good life depends on the strength of our relationships with family, friends, neighbours, colleagues and strangers.

An Ulster Scot may come to disbelieve in God, but not to wear his weekday clothes on the Sabbath.

Change is not what we expect from religious people. They tend to love the past more than the present or the future.

The background of the Negro culture is voodoo and magic; and the purposes the magic are control and power over God, man, nature and society. Voodoo and magic was the religion and life of America's Negro.

In India, religious life forms the centre, the keynote of the whole music of national life.

There is less pressure on abandoning native communities: what for? There is nothing to be gained by it. On one hand, there are plenty tempting opportunities of experimenting with identities - being one kind of person today and a different the next day. On the other hand, there is little pressure to include the ethnic identity or religious identity into this mechanism, because now everybody is in a kind of Diaspora today.

They always threw their arms around and hugged me while crying our Yiddish endearments. Yet none of them believed in God. They believed in social justice, good works, Israel, and Bette Midler. I was nearly thirty before I met a religious Jew.

In our society, marriage is not simply a governmental institution; it is a religious institution as well, today's decision might change the former, but it cannot change the latter.

Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished.

What we require is not a formal return to tradition and religion, but a rereading, a reinterpretation, of our history that can illuminate the present and pave the way to a better future. For example, if we delve more deeply into ancient Egyptian and African civilisations we will discover the humanistic elements that were prevalent in many areas of life. Women enjoyed a high status and rights, which they later lost when class patriarchal society became the prevalent social system.

The worlds of folklore and religion were so mingled in early twentieth venture German culture that even families who didn't go to church were often deeply Christian.

I am the East. I have philosophies, I have religions, who would exchange them for airplanes?

I think the important thing to learn is that we can retain a sentimental loyalty to the cultural and literary traditions of, say, Judaism, Anglicanism or Islam, and even participate in religious rituals such as marriages and funerals, without buying into the supernatural beliefs that historically went along with those traditions. We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.

When you come from where I come from, if anyone in the family makes it out, the others kind of come with you.

Conservative ideas are alive and dynamic, the result of a free and intellectually honest vision for the country. As long as conservatism is strong, the future of a strong America is assured.

Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.