“Religion is the private affair of an individual…be present in the public domain, but state has to be clearly separated from religion.”

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.

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.

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.

There is no possibility of a public demonstration [in Iran] of such defiance, but these defiant acts are certainly going on.

The ecological movement is concerned about this, and this is in here, where everything is public.

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?

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.

It is an intimately communicative affair between the painter and his painting, a conversation back and forth, the painting telling the painter even as it receives its shape and form.

A dishonor greater than any affair, is that of a friend who never was.

Any one prominent in affairs can always see when a man may steal a horse and when a man may not look over a hedge.

A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

It was only one life. What is one life in the affairs of a state?

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

This long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.