A Quote by Afshin Molavi

A brilliant inquiry into the contemporary Iranian predicament and what it means for the world. At a time when all too many of our leading thinkers are mired in the weeds of provincialism and narrow ideological wars, Postel has written a work of grace, intelligence, and towering integrity. Reading 'Legitimation Crisis' in Tehran is nothing less than a masterpiece of moral and political criticism.

Afshin Molavi

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Brilliant Contemporary Crisis Criticism Grace Ideological Inquiry Integrity Intelligence Iranian Leading Less Many Masterpiece Means Moral Narrow Nothing Our Political Predicament Provincialism Reading Tehran Than Thinkers Time Too Wars Weeds Work World Written

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Afshin Molavi
American - Author

Our support for the Shah, the CIA coup in 1953 - has become infused into the Iranian political discourse. The regime that came to power in 1979 during the Iranian revolution actually defined itself as anti-American, and that's now a critical ingredient in the Iranian domestic political debate. That really is the source of our problems - the regime in Tehran continues to see itself as opposing the US. In their eyes, everything the US does is directed at them in a very malevolent way, and therefore they have to fight back against it.

Kenneth M. Pollack

The American experiment, the United States in the past eight years [2008-2016] was not considered worthy of leading, because we had committed too many transgressions. We didn't have the moral authority to lead anybody because we had too many injustices in our past and too many discriminations and too many thises and thats and so forth. We were not worthy of leading, and we had been leading for too long in all the wrong directions. It was really, I think, despicable.

Rush Limbaugh

When our sailors in the Persian Gulf accidentally strayed into Iranian waters, that could have sparked a major international incident. Some folks here in Washington rushed to declare that it was the start of another hostage crisis. Instead, we worked directly with the Iranian government and secured the release of our sailors in less than 24 hours.

Barack Obama

So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. We can place good ideas ahead of old ideological battles, and a sense of purpose above the same narrow partisanship. We can act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity and, together, write the next great chapter in our history and meet the test of our time.

Barack Obama

In a democracy such as ours the leading minds seldom achieve a place of permanent influence. And the men who sit in Congress or even in the White House are usually not our leading minds. They are not the thinkers. Still less have they time for reflection.

Pearl S. Buck

Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.

C. S. Lewis

Too much of our work amounts to the drudgery of arranging means toward ends, mechanically placing the right foot in front of the left and the left in front of the right, moving down narrow corridors toward narrow goals. Play widens the halls. Work will always be with us, and many works are worthy. But the worthiest works of all often reflect an artful creativity that looks more like play than work.

James Ogilvy

To be contemporary actually means to be an artist. [But] I do not feel contemporary in my work. I perceive my work as old-fashioned. It does not have a frame of actuality in our time or locality.

Odd Nerdrum

Political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action. It is also aware of the ineluctable tension between the moral command and the requirements of successful political action. And it is unwilling to gloss over and obliterate that tension and thus to obfuscate both the moral and the political issue by making it appear as though the stark facts of politics were morally more satisfying than they actually are, and the moral law less exacting than it actually is.

Hans Morgenthau

The fruit of our labors is sweet when the work is consecrated to God. But we have to be able to weather the conditions - the winds, the rain or the drought, the brilliant sun and sometimes the bitter cold. Sometimes our work needs to be directed at improving our ground rather than excusing our own harvests because the place we have been given is a little hard; there are too many rocks, too many hills, too little top soil. If we focus on where we are instead of what we can do with our plot, we will find our efforts significantly diminished.

Elaine L. Jack

Modernity is the ensemble of changes - intellectual, political, economic, social, cultural, technological, aesthetic - that have altered the world drastically since roughly the 17th century, until which time the world was, in the above respects, far less different from the world of any previous epoch of recorded history than it is from the world of today. The modern predicament is the set of problems these changes have bequeathed us.

George Scialabba

Brilliant. . . . Marriage Confidential is both laugh-out-loud funny and gasp-out-loud shocking, and nothing less than a Feminine Mystique for our time. Mark my words, your marriage will change after reading this book.

Debby Applegate

Politicians in Washington work in a small, sheltered world where they lurch from crisis to crisis that they create, nurture and use as ideological triggers in their selfish pursuit of re-election.

Mike Barnicle

What I try to do is narrow the sermon series down to one big question. In this case the question is: What happens when grace happens? I knew I wanted to preach about grace. I just felt as if it was time for our church to be refreshed and see the beauty of God's grace - the uniqueness of the Christian grace as compared to the teachings of other world religions on forgiveness.

Max Lucado

It's too low, and if Europe wants to be a force in the world it needs to be more than a moral and political and economic force, which Europe is because it shares many of our values and demonstrates them around the world. But it has to have the military power that goes with that as well.

Ashton Carter

Britain's political voice depends on our role as a leading and influential member of the E.U. If we leave, we are of less value to our allies and of less concern to our enemies. We need the strongest voice we can get in the dangerous modern world.

Kenneth Clarke

A Quote by Afshin Molavi

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