Ruhollah Khomeini quotes - page 2

Ruhollah Khomeini was an Iranian religious and political leader who became the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran. His leadership played a central role in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which overthrew the Shah. He shaped Iran's politics and society for decades and remains a defining figure in modern Middle Eastern history. Here are 61 of his quotes:

If you pay no attention to the policies of the imperialists, and consider Islam to be simply the few topics you are always studying and never go beyond them, then the imperialists will leave you alone. Pray as much as you like; it is your oil they are after- why should they worry about your prayers? They are after our minerals, and want to turn our country into a market for their goods. That is the reason the puppet governments they have installed prevent us from industrializing, and instead, establish only assembly plants and industry that is dependent on the outside world.

Ruhollah Khomeini

Their plan is to keep us backward, to keep us in our present miserable state so they can exploit our riches, our underground wealth, our lands, and our human resources. They want us to remain afflicted and wretched, and our poor to be trapped in their misery. Instead of surrendering to the injunctions of Islam, which provide a solution for the problem of poverty, they and their agents wish to go on living in huge palaces and enjoying lives of abominable luxury.

Ruhollah Khomeini

The prophetic mission created a scientific-gnostic change in the world that converted the insipid Greek philosophies, which were formulated with all their past and present worth by the Greeks themselves into an objective mysticism and a veritable intuitive perception for masters of divine insight.

Ruhollah Khomeini

That which eases calamities is the fact that all are departing mortals. All of us will pass away; so, it is better to be sacrificed in His path.

Ruhollah Khomeini

Islam is the religion of militant individuals who are committed to truth and justice. It is the religion of those who desire freedom and independence. It is the school of those who struggle against imperialism. But the servants of imperialism have presented Islam in a totally different light. They have created in men's minds a false notion of Islam. The defective version of Islam, which they have presented in the religious teaching institution, is intended to deprive Islam of its vital, revolutionary aspect and to prevent Muslims from arousing themselves in order to gain their freedom, fulfill the ordinances of Islam, and create a government that will secure their happiness and allow them to live lives worthy of human beings.

Ruhollah Khomeini

Islam proclaims monarchy and hereditary succession wrong and invalid. When Islam first appeared in Iran, the Byzantine Empire, Egypt, and the Yemen, the entire institution of monarchy was abolished. In the blessed letters that the Most Noble Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) wrote to the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius and the Shahanshah of Iran, he called upon them to abandon the monarchical and imperial form of government, to cease compelling the servants of God to worship them with absolute obedience, and to permit men to worship God, Who has no partner and is the True Monarch. Monarchy and hereditary succession represent the same sinister, evil system of government that prompted the Lord of the Martyrs (Hussain bin Ali -- peace be upon him) to rise up in revolt and seek martyrdom in an effort to prevent its establishment. He revolted in repudiation of the hereditary succession of Yazid, to refuse it his recognition.

Ruhollah Khomeini

O nation, wake up! O government, wake up! Everybody wake up! You are all in the Presence of God. Tomorrow (in the next world), you will be called to account. Do not ignore the blood of our martyrs, and do not quarrel over position or status.

Ruhollah Khomeini

You were invigorated by mindfulness of God, migration from oneself to God-which is the greatest migration-migration from ego to the truth, and from this world to the unseen world.

Ruhollah Khomeini

Evidently, adoration, worship and sanctification of God require knowledge and awareness of His Most Exalted Station as well as the Attributes of His Glory and Grandeur; without due knowledge and awareness, these cannot be fulfilled.

Ruhollah Khomeini

Apprise your veiled and drooping hearts that the universe, from the highest heavens [ala al-illiyyin] to the lowest in hell [asfal as-safilin], is a manifestation of God, the Blessed and Exalted, and all are in the threshold of His Power.

Ruhollah Khomeini

[If] you have divine motives, material benefits will follow suit but they are no longer material; they have become divine.

Ruhollah Khomeini

The essence of praise accrues to none but God; your praise of a rose or an apple is [in essence] praise of God.

Ruhollah Khomeini

Most of the wailings of the awliya [pious believers] is caused by the pain of separation and detachment from the Beloved and His Generosity.

Ruhollah Khomeini

Only God, the Exalted, is the light; everything else is darkness.

Ruhollah Khomeini

We have sacrificed much blood and many martyrs. Islam has sacrificed blood and martyrs.

Ruhollah Khomeini

There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and hadiths urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.

Ruhollah Khomeini

if you hope at this juncture to cut the Gordian knots of socialism and communism by appealing to the center of Western capitalism, you will, far from remedying any of the ills of your society, commit a mistake which those to come will have to erase. For if Marxism has come to a deadlock in its social and economic policies, capitalism has also bogged down.

Ruhollah Khomeini

This regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.

Ruhollah Khomeini

All those against the revolution must disappear and quickly be executed.

Ruhollah Khomeini

... in our domestic and foreign policy, ... we have set as our goal the world-wide spread of the influence of Islam ... We wish to cause the corrupt roots of Zionism, capitalism and Communism to wither throughout the world. We wish, as does God almighty, to destroy the systems which are based on these three foundations, and to promote the Islamic order of the Prophet ...

Ruhollah Khomeini

Ayatollah, would you be so kind as to tell us how you feel about being back in Iran? Nothing. I don't feel anything.

Ruhollah Khomeini

These people are trying to bring back the regime of the late Shah or another regime. I will strike with my fists at the mouths of this government. From now on it is I who will name the government.

Ruhollah Khomeini