Quote

It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: November 13
Activist
Author
Feminist
Journalist
Politician
Scientist
Screenwriter
Xamar
Long
Time
Dissolve
Cage
Cages
Bars
Mental
Takes

More quotes by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Image
The mistake that the Bush administration should admit to is not so much that they made the wrong choices. They made the right analysis they made the right choices. But what they did wrong was the execution of those choices. That was wrong.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
...Bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
As a woman you are better off in life earning your own money. You couldn't prevent your husband from leaving you or taking another wife, but you could have some of your dignity if you didn't have to beg him for financial support.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
I come from a world where the word 'trauma' doesn't exist, because we are too poor. I didn't have an easy life compared to the average European. But compared to the average African, it wasn't all that bad.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
Islam is not a race...Islam is simply a set of beliefs, and it is not 'Islamophobic' to say Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
You'll be pleased to hear, Christopher, that I am no longer a Muslim liberal but an atheist [....] I find that it obviates the necessity for any cognitive dissonance.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
Avoiding offense means that we don't accept each other as equals.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
As soon as something like Monty Python's 'The Life of Brian' appears with a Muhammad figure as the main lead, directed by an Arabic Theo van Gogh, the controversial late Dutch filmmaker, we will have taken an enormous step forward.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
Young people, some of whom are not born into the faith, are being fired up by preachers using basic Islamic scripture and mobilized to wage jihad by radical imams who represent themselves as legitimate Muslim clergymen.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
You have to let individuals make their own choices and respect that, even if it's your own child. And that's what was taken away from me. My father passed away thinking I still had to go back to his way of believing.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
I'd love to go and visit the Mosque in Mecca again, just for the sheer beauty of it, not for God - much the way a non-Catholic might go to Vatican City because of the beauty of the buildings and the artifacts.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
I lived in countries that had no democracy... so I don't find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you don't know what it is not to have freedom.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
My first experience in the Netherlands was very pleasant, extremely pleasant. I mean, I got my residence permit, refugee status, within four weeks of arrival. People treated me extremely well.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
In Holland I have seen well-meaning, principled people blinded by multiculturalism, overwhelmed by the imperative to be sensitive and respectful of immigrant culture, while ignoring criminal abuse of women and girls.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
I call myself a liberal - a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
I want people to emphasize life before death as opposed to life after death.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
The Christian take on Hellfire seems less dramatic than the Muslim vision, which I grew up with, but Christian magical thinking appeals to me no more than my mother's angels and djinns.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali