"Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they were using it as an instrument of control in the same way that in Mao's China people were wearing Mao jackets and women were not supposed to wear any makeup.“

-Azar Nafisi

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Azar Nafisi quote about religion: "Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they..."

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"Basically, fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon. In the same way that Hitler evoked a mythological religion of German purity and the glory of the past, the Islamists use religion to evoke emotions and passions in people who have been oppressed for a long time in order to reach their purpose."

-Azar Nafisi

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"Those in the west who dismiss the repressiveness of laws against women in countries like Iran, no matter how benign their intentions, present a condescending view not just of the religion but also of women living in Muslim majority countries, as if the desire for choice and happiness is the monopoly of women in the west."

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"I see people who talk about America, and then undermine it by not paying attention to its soul, to its poetry. I see polarization, reductionism and superficiality."

-Azar Nafisi

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"America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry?"

-Azar Nafisi

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"This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture, its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry?"

-Azar Nafisi

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"This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture, its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry?"

-Azar Nafisi

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"Civilisation has ever accompanied emigration and conquest - the conflict of opinion, of religion, or of race."

-Alfred Russel Wallace

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"Religion is no more the parent of morality than an incubator is the mother of a chicken."

-Lemuel K. Washburn

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"I appreciate the 'Surreal Life.' I had a really positive experience on that show, and with those people. I found some love in my heart for religion again, and had the support of a new family of friends. I wouldn't have had the pleasure of meeting those people, if we were not all placed in that fishbowl."

-Vince Neil

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"Contradictory to my religion, I think, is journalism."

-Sydney Schanberg

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"Religion is the idol of the mob it adores everything it does not understand."

-Frederick II

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"When men take pleasure in feeling their minds elevated with strong drink, and so indulge their appetite as to disorder their understandings, neglect their duty as members of a family or civil society, and cast off all regard to religion, their case is much to be pitied."

-John Woolman

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