Lots of times you can feel as an exile in a country that you were born in.
Azar NafisiRead
After the rigged Iranian presidential elections in 2009, the Islamic regime attacked the 'humanities' as the main source of protests, the most effective tool used by the West, especially America, to corrupt and incite Iranian youth, and finally closed down all the Humanities departments in Iran's universities.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights how the Iranian regime viewed the humanities as a threat to their power and sought to suppress it.
In this quote, Azar Nafisi discusses the Iranian government's response to the widespread protests following the 2009 presidential elections. By targeting and ultimately closing down humanities departments in universities, the regime aimed to stifle critical thinking and dissent that were believed to be fueled by Western influences, particularly among the youth. Nafisi's observation illustrates the significant role that education and the humanities play in fostering individual thought and societal change.
Themes
IranHumanitiesEducationProtestsRegimeYouth
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on the importance of critical thinking in education, this quote can emphasize the need to protect humanities studies.
More from Azar Nafisi
All quotes →The worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, participating in your own execution, that is an act of utmost brutality.
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I believe that it is only through empathy, that the pain experienced by an Algerian woman, a North Korean dissident, a Rwandan child or an Iraqi prisoner, becomes real to me and not just passing news. And it is at times like this when I ask myself, am I prepared - like Huck Finn - to give up Sunday school heaven for the kind of hell that Huck chose?
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I am suddenly left alone again on the sunny path, with a memory of the rain.
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It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.
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Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.
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