As a woman you are better off in life earning your own money. You couldn’t prevent your husband from leaving you or taking another wife, but you could have some of your dignity if you didn’t have to beg him for financial support.
AYAAN HIRSI ALIWe have to start with the little babies who are born now, socialize them in freedom and critical thinking. We don’t have to throw away their faith. People confuse the two, thinking if you are enlightened that means apostasy. It doesn’t.
More Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
-
-
We who don’t want radical Islam to spread must compete with the agents of radical Islam. I want to see what would happen if Christians, feminists and Enlightenment thinkers were to start proselytizing in the Muslim community.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
As soon as something like Monty Python’s ‘The Life of Brian’ appears with a Muhammad figure as the main lead, directed by an Arabic Theo van Gogh, the controversial late Dutch filmmaker, we will have taken an enormous step forward.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
The mistake that the Bush administration should admit to is not so much that they made the wrong choices. They made the right analysis; they made the right choices. But what they did wrong was the execution of those choices. That was wrong.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
There is a huge difference between being tolerant and tolerating intolerance.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
The liberal psyche wants to protect minorities, to apologize for imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and the appalling treatment of black people during the civil rights movement. At the same time, they want to continue to defend the rights of individuals.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
Where there is no freedom of speech, there is no conscience.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
You have to let individuals make their own choices and respect that, even if it’s your own child. And that’s what was taken away from me. My father passed away thinking I still had to go back to his way of believing.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
The West is duly terrified. But it should not be surprised.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
Let us recognize that we can no longer tolerate violent oppression of women in the name of religion and culture any more than we would tolerate violent oppression espoused by any other bully in the name of a twisted rationale.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn’t make it easier.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
I do not believe in God, angels and the hereafter.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can’t acquire knowledge.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
If such a young nation as the U.S. could make it to superpower status, we could do it as well.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
I think of Canada, first and foremost, in terms of space. The amount of space available is breathtaking.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
What we are now doing with the victory, and I agree with you if you condemn that and I condemn whole-heartedly the trivial bullshit it is to go after a man who makes a scientific breakthrough and all that we as women — organized women — do is to fret about his shirt?
AYAAN HIRSI ALI






