Alija Izetbegović

“Men are not gentle and graceful beings solely oriented towards good. They are physical, coarse, contradictory, stretched between desires and temptations. In an unnatural wish to make them sinless and infallible, we suddenly realize that we have obtained bloodless, sentimental and false personalities incapable of both good and evil. Separating them from mother Earth, we separate them from life, and where is no life, there is no virtue either.”

“If the international community is not ready to defend the principles which it itself has proclaimed as its foundations, let it say so openly, both to the people of Bosnia and to the people of the world. Let it proclaim a new code of behavior in which force will be the first and the last argument.”

“Science gives an exact photograph of the world, but it lacks an essential dimension of reality.”

“500. There are paradoxes. If there were no night, we would be deprived of themagnificent image of a starry sky. Thus light deprives us of "vision," anddarkness helps us "see.”