"I speak Urdu quite a lot, too, and I read a lot of Persian."

Reading, Read

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"I speak Urdu quite a lot, too, and I read a lot of Persian."

Exlpore more Reading quotes

"From the time I could read, I found solace in my father's library...At the ages of ten and eleven and twelve I would have preferred to remain in the library..."

Alice Hoffman, American Author

Reading, Solace, Life, Knowledge

"What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! I went in and found the table laden with books. I looked in and sniffed them all. I could not resist carrying this one off and broaching it. I think I could happily live here and read forever."

Virginia Woolf, British Author

Reading, Joy, Books, Passion

"Be able to read blueprints, diagrams, floorplans, and other diagrams used in the construction process."

Marilyn vos Savant, American Writer

Reading, Read

"Some people claim that it is okay to read trashy novels because sometimes you can find something valuable in them. You can also find a crust of bread in a garbage can, if you search long enough, but there is a better way."

Jim Rohn, American Businessman

Reading, Books, Choice, Values

"If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads."

Sherman Alexie, American Writer

Reading, Knowledge, Survival, Learning

"It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also buy the time to read them, but one usually confuses the purchase of books with the acquisition of their contents."

Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher

Reading, Books, Time, Knowledge

"And what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversation?"

Lewis Carroll, English Author

Reading, Books, Conversation, Imagination, Engagement

"Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom."

Tahir Shah, British Author

Reading, Observation, Isolation, Curiosity

"A learned man is a sedentary, concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which he has set his heart. If the passion for reading conquers him, his gains dwindle and vanish between his fingers. A reader, on the other hand, must check the desire for learning at the outset; if knowledge sticks to him well and good, but to go in pursuit of it, to read on a system, to become a specialist or an authority, is very apt to kill what suits us to consider the more humane passion for pure and disinterested reading."

Virginia Woolf, British Author

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"If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all."

Thomas Carlyle, Scottish Philosopher

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Explore more quotes by Juan Cole

"I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to be as easy to rule Iraq as they thought."

War

"I think it's really unfortunate that academics have been sidelined in most important policy debates."

Policy

"My main expertise is in the past, but if I have to extrapolate into the future, I would say: no good news any time soon and an obvious exit strategy is not apparent to me."

Time

"Public interest in most of the Middle East was slight at that time; the Arab-Israeli conflict was all that people were interested in and that was not my specialty."

Time

"I don't accept the argument of people like David Horowitz that the government should impose some sort of predetermined political balance on academic research."

Government

"Partisan politics has no place in the classroom."

Politics

"I believe that the American administration of Iraq has been arrogant, has pursued policies that are illegal in international law and has been ignorant and incompetent. I said this very forthrightly to the senators."

Administration

"It's not proper for a professor to go before a class and promote one party or another. That's not academic scholarship."

Professor

"Administering another country is always a very tricky proposition."

Nation

"I think that there's been an unfortunate tendency for right wing think tanks to dominate these discussions. They often produce very shoddy studies and policy recommendations, which are nevertheless taken very seriously."

Policy