27 Powerful Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes That Are Sure To Move You

Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim.

Like I

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

There are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.

History

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn't make it easier.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

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.

I

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

Wishful thinking about the peaceful tolerance of Islam cannot interpret away this reality: hands are still cut off, women still stoned and enslaved, just as the Prophet Muhammad decided centuries ago.

Women

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

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.

You I

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

...Bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.

Family

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

I would rather clean than beg.

I

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

In a well-functioning democracy, the state constitution is considered more important than God's holy book, whichever holy book that may be, and God matters only in your private life.

Life God

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

As a reader, I could put on someone else's shoes and live through his adventures, borrow his individuality and make choices that I didn't have at home.

Home I

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can't acquire knowledge.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

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

Time

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

A virgin's silence is the proper answer to a marriage proposal; it signifies a dignified consent.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

You must learn what to fear and what not to fear.

You Fear

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

Such is the tragedy of girls and women who by the strictures of their upbringing and culture cannot own up to their body's desires, even to themselves.

Women Culture

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

The key imperatives of modernity: freedom of conscience, tolerance of difference, equality of the sexes, and an investment in life before death.

Life Death

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

Most of all, I think it was the novels that saved me from submission. I was young, but the first tiny, meek beginnings of my rebellion had already clicked into place.

Me Think Young I

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

This move is called Qworegoys, and the women of my grandmother's family taught it to their daughters just as they taught them to make thorn-bush fences to protect the hut from hyenas.

Family Women

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

Adults never explained anything. They saw children as akin to small animals, creatures who had to be tugged and beaten into adulthood before they were worthy of information and discussion.

Never Children

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

This wasn't just a band of frustrated Egyptian architects in Hamburg. It was much bigger than that,. and had nothing to do with frustration. It was about belief.

Belief

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

Force and rape are not an issue because he is a believing Muslim and he is an Osman Mahamud.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture’s intolerance.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

Confronted with such flagrant acts of intolerance—such abuses of the freedom of speech—a free society must surely do more. For intolerance is the one thing a free society cannot afford to tolerate.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  

In short, the liberation of the individual conscience from hierarchical and priestly authority opened up space for critical thinking in every field of human activity.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali