Alija Izetbegovic
I would sacrifice peace in order to win sovereignty for Bosnia, but for that peace in Bosnia, I would not sacrifice sovereignty.Collection: Peace
When you are in prison, you have but one desire: freedom. If you fall ill in prison, you do not think about freedom - you think about health. Health is, therefore, more important than freedom.Collection: Freedom
To seek trouble - this is not courage, this is madness. Courage is the willingness of man to sensibly face the troubles he cannot avoid.Collection: Courage
Life is a dangerous thing. Insecurity is the price of living.
Bosnia is a complicated country: three religions, three nations and those 'others'. Nationalism is strong in all three nations; in two of them there are a lot of racism, chauvinism, separatism; and now we are supposed to make a state out of that.
The ninth, the worst circle of the Inferno - Dante intended it for traitors.
A starry sky is equally interesting to a scientist, a mystic, an ethics scholar, and a poet. Looking at the stars, each experiences something different, and each sees his own picture.
Religion, as it is understood in the West, does not lead toward progress, and science does not lead toward humanism.
We Bosniaks would for sure fight for integrity of Bosnia.
I took revenge on hardship from my earlier life by forgetting it.
I believe that the people, instead of pretty lies, should be told the truth, no matter how ugly it may be. What can we do, destiny hasn't been kind to us; but, with the help of God, we will prevail.
The international community is pushing things forward in Bosnia... but it is doing it at expense of the Muslim people. I feel it as an injustice, these are the things that I cannot live with.
Our goal: the Islamization of Muslims. Our methods: to believe and to struggle.
As far as the sovereignty of Bosnia-Hercegovina is concerned we agreed to have limited sovereignty for a limited time and that is clear from the Dayton Agreement.
All in all this is a difficult political struggle which will go on for years, in which our people won't die anymore; I'm not sure how much we will be able to win, but I'm certain that we won't loose anything that we have now.
In these negotiations we are not a helpless object, although great world powers are involved. We play an active role and try to influence our destiny; we have our own trump cards and we use them.
Advantages of freedom do not have to be proved by something outside freedom itself. It is its own underwriter.
History sometimes makes fun of us and our best intentions.
It is difficult to help a man without hurting his pride. Everyone wants to be a giver and not a receiver.
Has it ever happened to you that you actually like a rogue more than a so-called honest citizen? Have you ever wondered why? I believe that this can only be so because a rogue is more original and more his own. He is what he is.
All man's failures are either because of the religious denial of man's biological needs or the materialistic denial of man's spiritual desires.
Whether man is a product of evolution or is 'created' becomes the question, 'Who is man? Is he part of the world or something different from it?'
There are only three integral views of the world: the religious, the materialistic, and the Islamic. They reflect three elemental possibilities (conscience, nature, and man), each of them manifesting itself as Christianity, materialism, and Islam.
We have no rational evidence that there exists another world, but we have a clear feeling that man does not exist only to produce and to consume.
Socialism and freedom are not compatible, regardless of repeated convincings.
Islam is a way of living rather than a way of thinking.
In history, good intentions do not always make good consequencesCollection: Good Intentions
When a man is ill,he has only one wish -to gain health,and when he does -then come a hundred wishes and he turns even unhappier than when he was lying sick in bedCollection: Lying
I would sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina ... but for that peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice sovereignty.Collection: Sacrifice
People complain that life is short,for me it seems very long.Collection: Life Is Short
Bosnia is a complicated country: three religions, three nations and those "others". Nationalism is strong in all three nations; in two of them there are a lot of racism, chauvinism, separatism; and now we are supposed to make a state out of that.Collection: Country
Science attempts to figure out laws and then uses it later. While the work of art reflects the cosmic order without asking for an explanationCollection: Art
In some socialist states well-performed work is rewarded with moral stimulants instead of material ones. However, the moral stimulants cannot be explained by materialistic philosophy. It is the same case with the appeals for humanism, justice, equality, freedom, human rights, and so forth, which are all of religious origin. Certainly, everybody has the right to live as he thinks best, including the right not to be consistent with his own pattern. Still, to understand the world correctly, it is important to know the true origin of meaning and of the ideas ruling the world.Collection: Religious
Bosnia is a complicated country: three religions, three nations and those “others”. Nationalism is strong in all three nations; in two of them there are a lot of racism, chauvinism, separatism; and now we are supposed to make a state out of that.Collection: Strong