It was universal pressure on the regime to secure my release. International pressure was certainly helpful in my release.
AKBAR GANJII, too, am against the dismantlement of Iran.
More Akbar Ganji Quotes
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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.
AKBAR GANJI -
The Shah’s regime was an incorrigible regime and after a while, when the revolution happened.
AKBAR GANJI -
It began early in the revolution. It was a process that was unfolding on a daily basis. We expected the system to be dispensing justice, but every day that passed by.
AKBAR GANJI -
You cannot bring democracy to a country by attacking it.
AKBAR GANJI -
The issue has two dimensions. One is the legal dimension and the other one is the issue at the realpolitik. [In the] legal realm.
AKBAR GANJI -
Even theories of secularism are constantly being revised and changed.
AKBAR GANJI -
We’ve had 60 years of intellectual development in Iran. How can we have the same system?
AKBAR GANJI -
In the West, when all of these reactors, nuclear reactors, are matters…part of the public domain, there are all kinds of supervision over them.
AKBAR GANJI -
Well-to-do classes are using all kinds of obvious and not-so-obvious benefits that this regime has created for it.
AKBAR GANJI -
There is more disgruntlement, but because there is no media, the voice of this opposition is not heard outside Iran.
AKBAR GANJI -
Would Americans accept if we decided to come here and decide who your rulers should be? So why do you expect us Iranians to accept the idea that the United States shall come in there and decide who shall govern us?
AKBAR GANJI -
I did join the Revolutionary Guard, but I was simply a simple Revolutionary Guard, never a commander.
AKBAR GANJI -
There is no possibility of a public demonstration [in Iran] of such defiance, but these defiant acts are certainly going on.
AKBAR GANJI -
If you look at the discourse before the revolution, whether it is the left communist, whether it is the right secularist.
AKBAR GANJI -
It is not clear what they have bought, how many secondhand materials they have bought. I am very worried that something like Chernobyl will happen to Iran.
AKBAR GANJI -
I could witness that as a result of Ahmadinejad, they lived in a dream. They believed that paradise is around the corner and that all their demands shall be met.
AKBAR GANJI -
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?
AKBAR GANJI -
I went to the front, but I never participated in the war itself.
AKBAR GANJI -
The modern infrastructures that exists in the world all contribute to the advancement of human rights and democracy.
AKBAR GANJI -
They are the kind of dishonest and populist slogans that we are not willing to use.
AKBAR GANJI -
Whatever Iranian people have bought, they have bought in the black market.
AKBAR GANJI -
The most important dichotomy that I make for a society is between those who support democracy and human rights, and those who oppose it.
AKBAR GANJI -
All manners of freedom, including freedom of expression, freedom of conscious, freedom of thought…it accepts tolerance. But it is not an atheist society.
AKBAR GANJI -
Of course, everyone knows that I’m also opposed to the Iranian regime and I have said that we must change the regime. But it is us, the Iranians, that must change the regime.
AKBAR GANJI -
I am against revolution and am proud of it. Democracy cannot be created through revolutions.
AKBAR GANJI -
When there is a crisis, the first thing that gets damaged and gets harmed is democracy.
AKBAR GANJI