“The situation began to change, revolutionary conditions was created…we simply wanted to change the regime.”

We can certainly be on the same side and the same front with the workers and with the oppressed people of Iran. We can certainly be on the same front with them.

Iran is going to get between $50 to $55 billion in oil revenue, which is unheard of in the history of the revolution.

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.

The regime kept saying that all of my opponents are lackeys of the United States.

The number of the opposition has certainly increased [in Iran].

We should put away the militaristic outlook.

We have two kinds of oppression. Oppression that is universal – everyone in Iran is subject to it. But everyone has also their own, unique way of experiencing this oppression.

They are the kind of dishonest and populist slogans that we are not willing to use.

I did join the Revolutionary Guard, but I was simply a simple Revolutionary Guard, never a commander.

You cannot bring democracy to a country by attacking it.

Well-to-do classes are using all kinds of obvious and not-so-obvious benefits that this regime has created for it.

The modern infrastructures that exists in the world all contribute to the advancement of human rights and democracy.

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…

There are varieties of theories of revolution. According to one of these theories, only one of these theories, revolutions occur when there is an explosion of rising expectation.

The most important dichotomy that I make for a society is between those who support democracy and human rights, and those who oppose it.

Three of our provinces have seen mass uprisings. The three provinces are Khuzestan, Azerbaijan, and Kurdistan.

It wasn’t until I came out of my daze that I began to appreciate my accomplishment.

The “patron saint” of Japanese quality control, ironically, is an American named W. Edwards Deming, who was virtually unknown in his own country until his ideas of quality control began to make such a big impact on Japanese companies.

I began to feel heard in that movement. But it was because my voice was resonating with other voices.

I began as a dramatist in the theater, so I’m always thinking about how a story moves, what it looks like, how to engage the senses.

This poem began as an emulation of Siqueiros’s compositional style and, in the process, became an ekphrastic aubade about my old neighborhood.

When I realized they had me pegged as a foreign nobleman type I began to live the part, too.

Let’s not forget: This all began when you had eight- and nine-year-old children writing graffiti on walls.

Iran began a policy of expanding its revolution, of interfering with the affairs of its neighbors