“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.”

It is like living with your wife, with whom you are in love and you are intensely involved in, but you also have tensions. And their position is that they want to deny that these tensions exist.

There is more disgruntlement, but because there is no media, the voice of this opposition is not heard outside Iran.

We believe in equal rights for all people in all nations. If Israel, the United States, Russia, Pakistan, other countries, China, have the right to have a nuclear program and nuclear bomb, Iran, too, must have that same right.

The issue has two dimensions. One is the legal dimension and the other one is the issue at the realpolitik. [In the] legal realm.

When women push their headscarf back an inch or two, this is interpreted to be a political act.

Let me begin by saying not only you can’t have democracy with $75 million. You can’t even have it with $750 billion.

But I know one thing for sure: That we, the Iranian people, are much more in line of danger than the West.

Religion is separate from the institution of the state.

We’ve had 60 years of intellectual development in Iran. How can we have the same system?

They lie on railroads, they tie themselves to the gates.

There’s all kind of evidence that there is enormous corruption in the distribution of that money. For example, they gave about $100 to $150 dollars to each of the teachers. They gave about $500 dollars to those who were getting married. Through this process.

What I’m worried about is that, in case that happens [nuclear explosion], then the Iranian people are the ones who are going to pay the heaviest price. But none of the Western countries have seriously talked about this.

Supporters of the national front, Mosaddeq, believe that in Iran, we don’t have a nationalities problem, we don’t have an ethnic problem.

All manners of freedom, including freedom of expression, freedom of conscious, freedom of thought…it accepts tolerance. But it is not an atheist society.

The solutions to the problems of the distraught lower strata of society are problems that can only be solved in the context of an overall political, cultural, economic development.

If you look at the discourse before the revolution, whether it is the left communist, whether it is the right secularist.

Let us have love and more love; a love that melts all opposition, a love that conquers all foes.

Shame on those breasts of stone that cannot melt in soft adoption of another’s sorrow.

Some years ago I said in an opinion that if this country is a melting pot, then either the Afro-Americans didn’t get in the pot or he didn’t get melted down.

Patience is to wait for the ice to melt instead of breaking it.

It’s the small things that melt my heart.

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake.

Oh darling, melt your own soul with flames of self love.

My anxious self always melted in your arms, then. Now your grin from another screen telling me “its going to be okay” works just the same.