Quote

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

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
Poor
Trauma
Easy
Compared
Doesn
European
Didn
African
Come
Average
Life
Exist
World
Wasn
Word

More quotes by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Image
Avoiding offense means that we don't accept each other as equals.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.
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
Image
I have had to pay a price for leaving Islam and for speaking out. I have to pay for round-the-clock security because of the death threats against me.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can't acquire knowledge.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
My brother thinks it is very, very bad that I left Islam. My half-sister wants to convert me back I want to convert her to Western values. My mum is terrified that when I die, and we all go to God, I will be burned.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
What I find daunting always is to stand on a stage and talk to people, whether they agree with me or not.
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 wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that Islam is peace and tolerance.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
The people who believe themselves to be on the left, and who defend the agents of Islam in the name of tolerance and culture, are being rightwing. Not just rightwing. Extreme rightwing. I don't understand how you can be so upset about the Christian right and just ignore the Islamic right. I'm talking about equality.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
The demand that Islam makes of women is to not attract attention to yourself, and if you are in a secular society, that attire does exactly that, and it is a political symbol, no longer religious.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
I would rather clean than beg.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
When I was with the Labor Party, I'd get into trouble because the party bosses determined that some of what I wrote, or proposed to write about, wasn't conducive to their policies or to electoral success.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
My conscience is informed by reason. It's like Kant's categorical imperative: behave to others as you would wish they behaved to you.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
Women covering their heads is traditional, but now we're seeing more and more women covering themselves from head to toe. This is said to be for religious reasons but it's actually the conflation of religion and politics - every political movement has its slogans, flags and dress.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
In a sense, my grandmother was living in the Iron Age. There was no system of writing among the nomads. Metal artifacts were rare and precious.... The first time she saw a white person my grandmother was in her thirties: she thought this person's skin had burned off.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
I don't believe there is such a thing as 'moderate Islam.' I think it's better to talk about degrees of belief and degrees of practice.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
In April 2006, a Dutch court ordered that I leave my safe-home that I was renting from the State. The judge concluded that my neighbors had a right to argue that they felt unsafe because of my presence in the building.
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