My contemplation of life and human nature in that secluded place [cell 54 of Cairo Central Prison] taught me that he who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never, therefore, make any progress.
I promise to crush Israel and return it to the humiliation and wretchedness of the Koran.
It is democracy I am really suffering from as much as I am suffering from the opposition.
To love means to give, and to give means to build, while to hate is to destroy.
There can be hope only for a society which acts as one big family, not as many separate ones.
There is no happiness for people at the expense of other people.
"Great suffering has a silver-lining that we can be grateful for, because it builds up a human being and puts him or her within reach of self-knowledge."
Only when he has ceased to need things can a man truly be his own master and so really exist.
If you don't have the capacity to change yourself and your own attitudes, then nothing around you can be changed.
He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality.
I believe that for peace a man may, even should, do everything in his power. Nothing in this world could rank higher than peace.
To damage the sovereignty of the individual is to replace a community inspired by love, benevolence, and beauty by another based solely on power.
Whatever the time or circumstances, the feeling that I am a peasant gives me a rare self-sufficiency. Indeed, the land is always there. I can go back to it at any time.
Let every girl, let every woman, let every mother here [in Israel]-and there in my country [Egypt]-know we shall solve all our problems through negotiations around the table rather than starting war.
I found that I faced a highly complex situation, and that I couldnt hope to change it until I had armed myself with the necessary psychological and intellectual capacity. My contemplation of life and human nature in that secluded place had taught me that he who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any process.
I have realized that my real self is a greater entity than any possible post or title.
Land is immortal, for it harbors the mysteries of creation.
Russians can give you arms but only the United States can give you a solution.
If you don't have the power to change yourself, then nothing will change around you.
We have always felt the sympathy of the world, but we would prefer the respect of the world to sympathy without respect.
Faith means that a man should regard any disaster simply as a fate-determined blow which must be endured.
Peace is more precious than a piece of land.
Real success is success with self. It's not in having things, but in having mastery, having victory over self.
Most people seek after what they do not possess and are enslaved by the very things they want to acquire.
Fear is, I believe, a most effective tool in destroying the soul of an individual - and the soul of a people.
I was brought up to believe that how I saw myself was more important than how others saw me.
Two places in this world make it impossible for a man to escape from himself: a battlefield and a prison cell.
This [fundamentalism] is not religion. It is obscenity. These are lies, the criminal use of religious power to misguide people.
I do not care for socially recognizable success. I only value that success which I can feel within me, which satisfies me, and which basically stems from self-knowledge.
Let there be no more war or bloodshed between Arabs and Israelis. Let there be no more suffering or denial of rights. Let there be no more despair or loss of faith.
If human values were relative, all laws-whether those based on revealed religions or those devised by man-would become meaningless.
The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.
