If you want to resolve a dispute or come out from conflict, the very first thing is to speak the truth. If you have a headache and tell the doctor you have a stomachache, how can the doctor help? You must speak the truth. The truth will abolish fear.
When the voice of truth rises from the minarets, the Buddha smiles, and the broken chain of history reconnects.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the harmonious union of truth and spiritual enlightenment, suggesting that when truth emerges, it transcends historical divides.
Ziauddin Yousafzai's quote reflects the idea that the emergence of truth has a unifying effect on humanity, hinting at a connection between different cultural and spiritual beliefs, represented here by the Buddha's smile. The 'voice of truth' symbolizes the clarity and understanding that can heal historical wounds and restore connections between people who may have previously been divided or estranged.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a keynote speech on cultural understanding, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of truth in bridging divides.
More from Ziauddin Yousafzai
All quotes βTrust your daughters, they are faithful. Honor your daughters, they are honorable. Educate your daughters, they are amazing.
Honour your daughters, trust them and most importantly, educate them.
When in many societies, fathers are usually known by their sons, I am one of the few fathers who is known by his daughter, and I'm proud of it.
I did not clip the wings of my daughter to fly.
Education is not simply to learn to read and write. It's emancipation. It makes you free.
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People can only live fully by helping others to live. When you give life to friends you truly live. Cultures can only realize their further richness by honoring other traditions. And only by respecting natural life can humanity continue to exist.
Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
On religion in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is a duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have, on mature consideration, satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known.
Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity.
The madness of mobs or the insolence of soldiers, or both, when too near to each other, occasion some mischief.