Where are your valiant warriors and your priests? Where are your hunting parties and your feasts? Where is that warlike mien, and where are those? Great armies that destroyed our country's foes? . . . Count Iran as a ruin, as the lair of lions and leopards! Look now and despair! — Ferdowsi

More selected quotes More at Wikiquote

I would rather discover one scientific fact than become King of Persia. — Democritus, as quoted in "Causation"

More selected quotes More at Wikiquote

Today, one of the problems of Iran, in fact, its worst problem, is the dispersal of Iranians. People who share a common land and live within the territory of one country should not be divided into rival sects. Today's Iran is in this misery, and if this continues, God knows what a hard hand the Iranians will suffer. — Ahmad Kasravi

More selected quotes More at Wikiquote

Foreign travellers in Iran, not only recently but in previous generations, have observed that some of our citizens habitually lie ... In our culture, steeped in history as we are, some liars actually try to explain and justify their behaviour by referring back to past national catastrophes. For example, they will tell you, when Mongol hordes overran the country, lying was the price to pay for personal survival ; and that gave us the habit of mendacity. Whatever its merits as an historical explanation, this point of view certainly offers a pitifully weak justification for today's liars. — Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, 1961

More selected quotes More at Wikiquote

I found that many Americans did not even know that a country named Iran existed, let alone what it was like. Even among the diplomatic corps and among well-educated people, there was a vagueness about who the Iranians were or what the culture was, a tendency to confuse Iran with Iraq or to mistakenly assume that Iran is an Arab country simply because it is an Islamic nation. This fuzziness about the world outside is unique to America; among the intelligensia of European countries, for example, there is generally a higher level of awareness and information regarding cultures other than their own. — Ashraf Pahlavi, 1980

More selected quotes More at Wikiquote

I come from the noble land of Iran, representing a great and renowned nation, famous for its age old civilization as well as its distinguished contribution to the founding and expansion of the Islamic civilization; a nation that has survived the strong winds of despotism, reactionism and submission, relying on its cultural and human wealth; a nation which pioneered in the East the establishment of civil society and constitutional government in the course of its contemporary history, even though as a result of foreign interference and domestic deficiencies, at times it may have faltered in its course; a nation which has been at the forefront of the struggle for independence and against colonialism, though its national movement was subverted by a foreign- orchestrated coup. And, a nation which carries the torch of its popular revolution, not won by force of arms or a coup, but by dethroning of the regime of coup d'etat through the power of "word" and "enlightenment". In the course of its new experience, our nation has endured eight years of an imposed war, pressure, sanctions and various allegations. It has also fallen victim to terrorism, this ominous and sinister phenomenon of the twentieth century. — Mohammad Khatami, President of Iran, (1997-2005)

More selected quotes More at Wikiquote

Our country was very rich and Iranians were considered rich, educated people. You had a real intellectual elite in Iran then. — Marjane Satrapi, renowned novelist and film director.

More selected quotes More at Wikiquote

Whereas now Iranian cinema shows the Iranian people to the world. The US has tried very hard to make an entire people out to be terrorists. The Iranian cinema tries to say that the Iranian people are very warm and poetic people. — Mohsen Makhmalbaf, president of Asian Film Academy

More selected quotes More at Wikiquote

We like to forget the history, Iranians don't. In 1953, The United States and Britain overthrew the parliamentary government [in Iran] and installed a brutal dictator. [...] In 1979, the population overthrew the dictator. And since then the United States has been essentially torturing Iran: First tried the military coup and then supported Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s invasion of Iran which killed hundreds of thousands of people and after that United States started imposing harsh sanctions on Iran. — Noam Chomsky

More selected quotes More at Wikiquote

The Persians ruled for a thousand years and did not need us Arabs even for a day. We have been ruling them for one or two centuries and cannot do without them for an hour. — Abbasid Caliphate, in Bertold Spuler

More selected quotes More at Wikiquote

There are approximately 100,000 clerics in Iran and over 60,000 of them are in Qom. Most of them are theology students who have been studying there for many years, between 10-25 years on average.... Every student has to study a minimum of 25 years before he can attain the status of ‘ayatollah’, however most students spend 10 years studying in the hawza. — Mohsen Kadivar

More selected quotes More at Wikiquote

Before the revolution I thought there are appropriate individuals who would do the job according to Islam, therefore I repeatedly said that clerics would go after their own job. Then I saw that most of them were inappropriate individuals and I found out that what I said was not true, so I came and clearly announced that I was wrong. — Ruhollah Khomeini

More selected quotes More at Wikiquote

Maybe my guilt is that I am an Iranian, born here and want to die here too. — Sadegh Hedayat, 1945

More selected quotes More at Wikiquote