“People first concern themselves with meeting their basic needs; only afterwards, do they pursue any higher needs.”

We coin concepts and we use them to analyse and explain nature and society. But we seem to forget, midway, that these concepts are our own constructs and start equating them with reality.

If a group of people feels that it has been humiliated and that its honour has been trampled underfoot, it will want to express its identity and this expression of an identity will take different shapes and forms.

In many of the things that people do, they themselves are the centre of attention, but they inscribe some other name on their banner.

As a result of the awareness and consciousness of decline, an awareness and consciousness of a national ethnicity or an Islamic identity also came into being.

Energy is a concept that has been coined by physicists. There is no observable thing known as energy anywhere.

We must break problems down into small, digestible bits. We must define the concepts that we use and explain what components they consist of. We must tackle small problems.

Establishing an equilibrium between the Islam of truth and Islam as an identity is one of the most difficult tasks of religious intellectuals.

Compromise has a negative connotation.

In order for answers to become clear, the questions have to be clear.

When you are in your teenage years you are consciously experiencing everything for the first time, so adolescent stories are all beginnings. There are never any endings.

The first law of economics is that when the price goes up, consumption comes down. This is a divine law.

The fight against corruption is successful if you prevent corruption taking place in the first place.

My first wife was a theater person.

The first time I heard Clyde McPhatter singing with the Dominoes at the Apollo I just fell off my chair

The fight against corruption is not bound to high-profile arrests and high-profile investigations.

When I was 15 I became a full-time singer in a band. At 18 I made my first record.

When you begin to become conscious, more aware, when your eyes begin to open, the first thing you see is how deluded you are and how much you’re holding onto that which makes you suffer. This is, in many ways, the most important step: Are you willing to be aware?