Let me begin by saying not only you can’t have democracy with $75 million. You can’t even have it with $750 billion.
AKBAR GANJIIn a totalitarian state, the state views any act of an individual to be political in nature. For example, the clothing that a person wears in a modern state is a private affair whereas in the Islamic Republic all women are forced to wear the hijab (Islamic attire).
More Akbar Ganji Quotes
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When I was on my hunger strike, and I was in a hospital, the guards who inflicted all manner of injustice against me, and all manner of hardship…
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The U.S. should start talking about disarmament, nuclear disarmament, of the region.
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The most important dichotomy that I make for a society is between those who support democracy and human rights, and those who oppose it.
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[In] every revolution, there is a great divergence between what the revolutionaries expect and what the revolution actually accomplishes.
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The lower strata are suffering all kinds of oppression and the injustice that is inflicted upon them has many faces and many facets.
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Well-to-do classes are using all kinds of obvious and not-so-obvious benefits that this regime has created for it.
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Even theories of secularism are constantly being revised and changed.
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We should put away the militaristic outlook.
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I, too, am against the dismantlement of Iran.
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In Iran, where everything is covert, we have no firsthand information.
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The entirety of this discourse was such that it encouraged the kind of ascendancy for a man like Ayatollah Khomeini.
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There is more disgruntlement, but because there is no media, the voice of this opposition is not heard outside Iran.
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But I know one thing for sure: That we, the Iranian people, are much more in line of danger than the West.
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All manners of freedom, including freedom of expression, freedom of conscious, freedom of thought…it accepts tolerance. But it is not an atheist society.
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When there is a crisis, the first thing that gets damaged and gets harmed is democracy.
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The issue has two dimensions. One is the legal dimension and the other one is the issue at the realpolitik. [In the] legal realm.
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The modern infrastructures that exists in the world all contribute to the advancement of human rights and democracy.
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Whatever Iranian people have bought, they have bought in the black market.
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I have spent six years in prison, the last six years. Even if I was outside the prison, how much actual space was there for an investigative journalist to do his work in Iran?
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The Revolutionary Guard was created to help defend the revolution, but it soon was diverted from its initial path.
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Religion is the private affair of an individual…be present in the public domain, but state has to be clearly separated from religion.
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The difference between us and the other side is that they use populist and…kind of slogans that are…they fool the people.
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They lie on railroads, they tie themselves to the gates.
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Revolutions invariably don’t solve the issue of justice, and in its place, suppression and limiting freedom replaces that idea.
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The situation began to change, revolutionary conditions was created…we simply wanted to change the regime.
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I did join the Revolutionary Guard, but I was simply a simple Revolutionary Guard, never a commander.
AKBAR GANJI