Iran

If all of you gather – and also invite your ancestors from hell – you will not be able to stop the Iranian nation. —Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the northeast, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, and the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a population of over 90 million, Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population and is the sixth-largest country in Asia. It is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital, largest city, and financial center.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

A

• The Islamic Republic of Iran is the manifestation of true democracy in the region. The discourse of the Iranian nation is focused on respect for the rights of human beings and a quest for tranquility, peace, justice and development for all through monotheism.
  • Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (17 September 2005)

• If all of you gather – and also invite your ancestors from hell – you will not be able to stop the Iranian nation.
  • Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, quoted in "Big Six Spank Iran", New York Post (16 March 2007)

• And dear as the wet diver to the eyes
  Of his pale wife who waits and weeps on shore,
  By sandy Bahrein, in the Persian Gulf,
  Plunging all day in the blue waves, at night,
  Having made up his tale of precious pearls,
  Rejoins her in their hut upon the sands—
  So dear to the pale Persians Rustum came.
  • Matthew Arnold, Sohrab and Rustum (1853)

B

• Iran is the country of the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich. The lot of the majority of people in Iran has not moved forward even an inch during the last fifty years of the Pahlavi dynasty's reign, though the seven-year-old middle-class boy of fifty years ago, namely, the present Shah of Iran, has grown to be one of the richest men on earth.
  • Reza Baraheni, The Crowned Cannibals: Writings on Repression in Iran (1977), p. 10.

E

• The American people have the greatest respect and admiration for the Iranian people. Your Kings from Cyrus and Darius are known among those famous monarchs who have advanced the cause of humanity. Your scientists have contributed to the foundations on which we have built our industrial society. Your philosophers and poets have enriched the culture of the west.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower, toast at a luncheon given in his honor by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (December 14, 1959), as quoted in Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, Online

F

• Where are your valiant warriors and your priests? Where are your hunting parties and your feasts? Where is that warlike mien, and where are those? Great armies that destroyed our country's foes? ... Count Iran as a ruin, as the lair of lions and leopards! Look now and despair!
  • Ferdowsi, as quoted in Reza Aslan, "The Epic of Iran", The New York Times (30 April 2006)

• Kaiumers first sat upon the throne of Persia, and was master of the world.
  • Ferdowsi, as quoted in "Persia's crowning glory", BBC (4 June 2000)

• Thy dawn, O Master of the world, thy dawn;
  The hour the lilies open on the lawn,
  The hour the grey wings pass beyond the mountains,
  The hour of silence, when we hear the fountains,
  The hour that dreams are brighter and winds colder,
  The hour that young love wakes on a white shoulder,
  O Master of the world, the Persian Dawn.
  That hour, O Master, shall be bright for thee:
  Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea,
  The braves who fight thy war unsheathe the sabre,
  The slaves who work thy mines are lashed to labour,
  For thee the waggons of the world are drawn—
  The ebony of night, the red of dawn!
  • James Elroy Flecker, Hassan, act II, sc. ii (1922)

G

• Everything I learned about Iranians, I learned working in the pool room. I met a lot of liars, and I know Iranians are liars.
  • Lindsey Graham, as quoted in Anthony Zurcher, "Republican conference: Day two — Bush 'proud' of family", BBC News (22 May 2015)

H

Deep is the primitive belief that it is the Anglo-Saxons who are the puppet masters of everything that happens in Iran. —Christopher Hitchens

• بده ساقی می باقی که در جنت نخواهی یافت
  کنار آب رکن‌آباد و گلگشت مصلا را
  • Boy, let yon liquid ruby flow,
    And bid thy pensive heart be glad,
    Whateeer the frowning zealots say:
    Tell them their Eden cannot show
    A stream so clear as Rocnabad,
    A bow'r so sweet as Moselláy.
  • Hafez, Shirazi Turk, as translated by Sir William Jones (1771, 1772)

• One of the signs of Iran's underdevelopment is the culture of rumor and paranoia that attributes all ills to the manipulation of various demons and satans. And, of course, the long and rich history of British imperial intervention in Persia does provide some support for the notion. But you have no idea how deep is the primitive belief that it is the Anglo-Saxons—more than the CIA, more even than the Jews—who are the puppet masters of everything that happens in Iran.
  • Christopher Hitchens, "Persian Paranoia", Slate (June 22, 2009)

• Persicos odi, puer, apparatus.
  • My lad, I hate Persian pomp.
  • Horace, Odes, i, 38, as translated by Owen Lee, Word, Sound, and Image in the Odes of Horace (1969), Ch. 5

K

• The country’s air defense headquarters informs the honorable people of Iran that, despite previous warnings from the officials of the Islamic Republic to the criminal and illegal Israeli regime to refrain from any provocative actions, this illegitimate regime launched an attack early this morning on military sites in the provinces of Tehran, Khuzestan, and Ilam.
  The unified air defense system successfully intercepted and countered this aggressive action, though limited damage was incurred at some points, which is currently under investigation
  • Khatam al-Anbiya, Air Defense Command, according to "Iran Air Defense Forces: Israel Attacks Caused Limited Damage", iranpress.com (October 26, 2024)

M

• Unhappy Persia, that in former age
  Hast been the seat of mighty conquerors.
  • Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine, Part 1 (c. 1587) act 1, sc. 1 (Cosroe)

P

• Foreign travellers in Iran, not only recently but in previous generations, have observed that some of our citizens habitually lie ... In our culture, steeped in history as we are, some liars actually try to explain and justify their behaviour by referring back to past national catastrophes. For example, they will tell you, when Mongol hordes overran the country, lying was the price to pay for personal survival; and that gave us the habit of mendacity. Whatever its merits as an historical explanation, this point of view certainly offers a pitifully weak justification for today's liars.
  • Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, Mission for My Country (1961), p. 246

• I found that many Americans did not even know that a country named Iran existed, let alone what it was like. Even among the diplomatic corps and among well-educated people, there was a vagueness about who the Iranians were or what the culture was, a tendency to confuse Iran with Iraq or to mistakenly assume that Iran is an Arab country simply because it is an Islamic nation. This fuzziness about the world outside is unique to America; among the intelligensia of European countries, for example, there is generally a higher level of awareness and information regarding cultures other than their own.
  • Ashraf Pahlavi, Faces in a Mirror (Prentice Hall, 1980), p. 100

S

In Iran, the walls of homes are transparent and the halls of justice are opaque. —Joe Stork

•    This scimitar
  That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince.
  • Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596) act 2, sc. 1 (Morocco)

• I do not like the fashion of your garments. You’ll say they are Persian; but let them be changed.
  • Shakespeare, King Lear (c. 1603) act 3, sc. 6 (Lear to 'Poor Tom')

• In Iran, the walls of homes are transparent and the halls of justice are opaque.
  • Joe Stork, on the ‘morality’ campaign, as quoted in "Iran: End Arrests on Immorality Charges", Human Rights News (17 May 2007)

• The Persians ruled for a thousand years and did not need us Arabs even for a day. We have been ruling them for one or two centuries and cannot do without them for an hour.
  • Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik (717), in Bertold Spuler, The Muslim World, Vol. I: The Age of the Caliphs (Leiden: Brill, 1960), p. 29

• The discovery of Iran was only the first step toward a much greater surprise: I recognized that something stood behind Iran and its significance, something that linguistics has been occupied with for the last one hundred years without really getting anywhere: the Indo- German question.
  • Josef Strzygowski, quoted in Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

Z

• During the Sasanian period not only the Persian culture impacted the Roman culture considerably, but its influence reached as far as Western Europe, Africa, China and India, and played a prominent role in the formation of both European and Asian medieval art. And then much of what later became known as Islamic culture in art, architecture, music as well as math, medicine, sciences and other subject matters was the transfer from the Sasanians to the Muslim world, through the efforts of Iranians.
  • Abdolhossein Zarrinkoob, Two Centuries of Silence (دو قرن سکوت, Do Qarn Sokut), translated by Avid Kamgar (AuthorHouse, August 2016)

Anonymous

• Persia consists of two parts: a desert with salt, and a desert without salt.
  • Reported in George N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, vol. 1 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1892) p. 242, note

See also

• Imperial State of Iran