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Let me begin by saying not only you can't have democracy with $75 million. You can't even have it with $750 billion.

Akbar Ganji

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Akbar Ganji
Age: 54
Essayist
Journalist
Writer
Ghazvin
Akbar Ganǧī
Million
Begin
Millions
Democracy
Saying
Even
Billion
Billions

More quotes by Akbar Ganji

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It was universal pressure on the regime to secure my release. International pressure was certainly helpful in my release.
Akbar Ganji
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Three of our provinces have seen mass uprisings. The three provinces are Khuzestan, Azerbaijan, and Kurdistan. Recently, we witnessed massive demonstration by Iranian woman in the 7th of Tir square, and it was brutally suppressed.
Akbar Ganji
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If you look at the discourse before the revolution, whether it is the left communist, whether it is the right secularist...the entirety of this discourse was such that it encouraged the kind of ascendancy for a man like Ayatollah Khomeini.
Akbar Ganji
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When I was on my hunger strike, and I was in a hospital, the guards who inflicted all manner of injustice against me, and all manner of hardship...I could witness that as a result of Ahmadinejad, they lived in a dream. They believed that paradise is around the corner and that all their demands shall be met.
Akbar Ganji
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Religion is separate from the institution of the state.
Akbar Ganji
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When I say that I am opposed to this budget, everyone says, Well, what do you think the United States should do? My response is, Why should the United States do anything?
Akbar Ganji
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Khomeini obviously had many problems, but he had one clever side to him. He never made economic promises to people and as a result, he never led to dissatisfaction in this perspective. Because they need to get votes, they use misleading slogans. And this leads to rising expectations. I had a personal experience.
Akbar Ganji
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The ecological movement is concerned about this, and this is in here, where everything is public. In Iran, where everything is covert, we have no firsthand information.
Akbar Ganji
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[In] every revolution, there is a great divergence between what the revolutionaries expect and what the revolution actually accomplishes.
Akbar Ganji
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We can certainly be on the same side and the same front with the workers and with the oppressed people of Iran. We can certainly be on the same front with them.
Akbar Ganji
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We should put away the militaristic outlook. The U.S. should start talking about disarmament, nuclear disarmament, of the region.
Akbar Ganji
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Supporters of the national front, Mosaddeq, believe that in Iran, we don't have a nationalities problem, we don't have an ethnic problem. It is like living with your wife, with whom you are in love and you are intensely involved in, but you also have tensions. And their position is that they want to deny that these tensions exist.
Akbar Ganji
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I went to the front, but I never participated in the war itself.
Akbar Ganji
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When I talk about secularism, I'm talking about theories today. To give you for example, one example: Those who consider themselves followers of Mosaddeq today are adamantly against federalism.
Akbar Ganji
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The Shah's regime was an incorrigible regime and after a while, when the revolution happened, the situation began to change, revolutionary conditions was created...we simply wanted to change the regime.
Akbar Ganji
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I have spent six years in prison, the last six years. Even if I was outside the prison, how much actual space was there for an investigative journalist to do his work in Iran? But I know one thing for sure: That we, the Iranian people, are much more in line of danger than the West.
Akbar Ganji
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Whatever Iranian people have bought, they have bought in the black market. It is not clear what they have bought, how many secondhand materials they have bought. I am very worried that something like Chernobyl will happen to Iran.
Akbar Ganji
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It began early in the revolution. It was a process that was unfolding on a daily basis. We expected the system to be dispensing justice, but every day that passed by, we recognized that the justice we expected and hoped for was not about to be achieved.
Akbar Ganji
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The difference between us and the other side is that they use populist and...kind of slogans that are...they fool the people. They are the kind of dishonest and populist slogans that we are not willing to use.
Akbar Ganji
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I, too, am against the dismantlement of Iran.
Akbar Ganji