Popularly known as the ‘Spiritual father of Pakistan’, Sir Muhammad Iqbal was a renowned poet, philosopher, barrister and politician from Lahore, British India. As a result of his prolific work in Urdu and Persian Literature, he was tagged as the ‘Poet of the East’. Iqbal is the one who coined the ‘Two Nation Theory’ which eventually led to the partition of India and Pakistan. He was a key member of the All-India Muslim Leauge, and his famous speech at the Allahabad session is widely considered as a breakthrough moment for formation of Pakistan. Along with Jinnah, he spearheaded the founding principles of Pakistan Movement. His notable works include Asrar-e-Khudi, Rumuz-e-Bekhudi, Payam-e-Mashriq, Zabur-e-Ajam and Javed Nama. He was also the author of popular Indian hymn ‘Saare Jahan se Achha’. Iqbal was knighted by King George V in 1922, which granted him the title of ‘Sir’. We have collected Iqbal’s most famous quotes from his speeches, articles, poems, books etc. Let us take you through these quotes from the Father of Pakistan.
People who have no hold over their process of thinking ara likely to be ruined by liberty of thought.
Muhammad Iqbal
People who have no hold over their process of thinking are likely to be ruined by liberty of thought. If thought is immature, liberty of thought becomes a method of converting men into animals.
Muhammad Iqbal
Islam is itself destiny and will not suffer destiny.
Muhammad Iqbal
The alchemist of the West has turned stone into glass
But my alchemy has transmuted glass into flint
Pharaohs of today have stalked me in vain
I lead no party; I follow no leader. I have given the best part of my life to careful study of Islam, its law and polity, its culture, its history and its literature.
Destiny is the prison and chain of the ignorant. Understand that destiny like the water of the Nile: Water before the faithful, blood before the unbeliever.
Muhammad Iqbal
Vision without power does bring moral elevation but cannot give a lasting culture.
Man is primarily governed by passion and instinct.
Muhammad Iqbal
The wing of the Falcon brings to the king, the wing if the crow brings him to the cemetery.
Muhammad Iqbal
Plants and minerals are bound to predestination. The faithful is only bound to the Divine orders.
Muhammad Iqbal
Since love first made the breast an instrument Of fierce lamenting, by its flame my heart Was molten to a mirror, like a rose I pluck my breast apart, that I may hang This mirror in your sight.
The ultimate purpose of religious life is to make this evolution move in a direction far more important to the destiny of the ego than the moral health of the social fabric which forms his present environment.
The new world is as yet
behind the veil of destiny
In my eyes, however
its dawn has been unveiled
Muhammad Iqbal
The possibility of a scientific treatment of history means a wider experience, a greater maturity of practical reason, and finally a fuller realization of certain basic ideas regarding the nature of life and time.
Another way of judging the value of a prophet's religious experience, therefore, would be to examine the type of manhood that he has created, and the cultural world that has sprung out of the spirit of his message.
But the universe, as a collection of finite things, presents itself as a kind of island situated in a pure vacuity to which time, regarded as a series of mutually exclusive moments, is nothing and does nothing.
It is the lot of man to share in the deeper aspirations of the universe around him and to share his own destiny as well as that of the universe, now by adjusting himself to its forces, now by putting the whole of his energy to his own ends and purposes.
Muhammad Iqbal
Become dust - and they will throw thee in the air; Become stone - and they will throw thee on glass.
The immediacy of mystic experience simply means that we know God just as we know other objects. God is not a mathematical entity or a system of concepts mutually related to one another and having no reference to experience.
It may, however, be said that the level of experience to which concepts are inapplicable cannot yield any knowledge of a universal character, for concepts alone are capable of being socialized.
Indeed, in view of its function, religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation of its ultimate principles than even the dogmas of science.
Muhammad Iqbal
Unbeliever is he who follows predestination even if he be Muslim, Faithful is he, if he himself is the Divine Destiny.
Muhammad Iqbal
Thus passing through the infinite varieties of space we reach the Divine space which is absolutely free from all dimensions and constitutes the meeting point of all infinities.
Muhammad Iqbal
I, therefore, demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interest of India and Islam.
Muhammad Iqbal
Reh Gyi Rasm-e-Azan, Rooh-e-Bilali Na Rahi
Falsafa Reh Gya, Talqeen-e-Ghazali Na Rahi
Azan yet sounds, but never now Like Bilal’s, soulfully;
Philosophy, conviction-less, Now mourns its Ghazzali
But only a brief moment
is granted to the brave
one breath or two, whose wage is
The long nights of the grave
Muhammad Iqbal
Inductive reason, which alone makes man master of his environment, is an achievement; and when once born it must be reinforced by inhibiting the growth of other modes of knowledge.
For centuries Eastern heart and intellect have been absorbed in the question � Does God exist? I propose to raise a new question � new, that is to say, for the East � Does man exist?
That is why, according to this newer psychology, Christianity has already fulfilled its biological mission, and it is impossible for the modern man to understand its original significance.
Muhammad Iqbal
The heart is like a mirror. Do not prevent it from being broken. It’s breakage is more dearer in the sight of its maker [Allah], than its safety. Almighty Allah being indeed the Maker
I am but as the spark that gleams for a moment,
His burning candle consumed me - the moth;
His wine overwhelmed my goblet,
The master of Rum transmuted my earth to gold
And set my ashes aflame.
In the first period religious life appears as a form of discipline which the individual or a whole people must accept as an unconditional command without any rational understanding of the ultimate meaning and purpose of that command.
Yet higher religion, which is only a search for a larger life, is essentially experience and recognized the necessity of experience as its foundation long before science learnt to do so.
If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy.
Muhammad Iqbal
But only a brief moment is granted to the brave one breath or two, whose wage is the long nights of the grave.
Muhammad Iqbal
The truth is that the religious and the scientific processes, though involving different methods, are identical in their final aim. Both aim at reaching the most real.
Muhammad Iqbal
Art: If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy.
Conduct, which involves a decision of the ultimate fate of the agent cannot be based on illusions.
Muhammad Iqbal
But the perception of life as an organic unity is a slow achievement, and depends for its growth on a people's entry into the main current of world-events.
