Azar Nafisi Quotes

In order for a president to be transformational, the old order has to fall as the orthodoxies that kept it in power exhaust themselves.

For years, I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions in the South, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you've got to have a reconstruction of the entire system, a revolution of values.

Chinese people themselves, they really want change.

Revolutions are of no us;, it is necessary to work on transforming the brain: on sowing a different knowledge/awareness, on creating a new conscience, that is like a magic box full of brains.

A huge change has taken place in my lifetime.

Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.

There is complete disdain for all that exists .... History, society, and the economics of present institutions are all minor issues in choosing a reform program ...

Cultural views often don't move at all for a very long time, but when they move they can move very fast.

The period of radical reform is finished.

A revolution is generally only evolution--an explosive sequence of events crowded into a short space of time, but leaving more of the ancient regime untouched than usually is at first apparent.

Cultural change always precedes political change.

It takes time to change a system and to change a mindset.

I think people look at revolution too much in terms of power. I think revolution has to be seen more anthropologically, in terms of transitions from one mode of life to another.

The world had already changed before September 11. The world has been going through a process of change over the last 20 or 30 years. A civilization ends, another one begins.

A revolution simply means great change, significant change, and that's how I'm defining it - great change for the better, brought about through non-violent means.

I am also one of those persons who were transformed, who grew out of the Soviet system and transformed myself into the new Russia.

We're on the cusp, on the brink, of enormous change in this country.

I don't think anything changes until ideas change. The usual American viewpoint is to believe that something is wrong with the person.

There is little doubt that we are in the midst of a revolution of a much more profound and fundamental nature than the social and political revolutions of the last half century.

For me, 'revolution' simply means radical change.

Some of those men in power, we just have to change their faces because we're not going to change their minds.

Listen, the next revolution is gonna be a revolution of ideas.

The world is changing very profoundly.

Some would suggest that there has been a dramatic change in our perception of the world and ourselves within the world. Others have observed that there has been an almost complete about-face in a relatively short span of time.

We are witnessing an enormous shift of collective consciousness throughout the world. We are at the precipice of great transformation within our culture and government.