Alija Izetbegovic

“Only God was able to create a free creature, and freedom could only arise by the act of creation.”

“In one eon of eternity, a free being started to exist. Without a divine touch, the result of evolution would not have been man, but rather a more developed animal, a super-animal, a creature...”

“Raphael created his paintings not with his hands but with his spirit. Beethoven wrote his best compositions when he was already deaf.”

“The equality of men is a spiritual and not a natural, physical, or intellectual fact. It exists as a moral quality of man, as the human dignity, or as the equal value of the human personalit...”

“There is an order to an engine and an order to a melody. These two orders cannot, even in the final analysis, be reduced to a common source... The existence of another world (another order)...”

“History sometimes makes fun of us and our best intentions.”

“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...”

“We Bosniaks would for sure fight for integrity of Bosnia.”

“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, separati...”

“I would sacrifice peace in order to win sovereignty for Bosnia, but for that peace in Bosnia, I would not sacrifice sovereignty.”

“The ninth, the worst circle of the Inferno - Dante intended it for traitors.”

“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.”

“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 ma...”

“Religion, as it is understood in the West, does not lead toward progress, and science does not lead toward humanism.”

“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.”

“To seek trouble - this is not courage, this is madness. Courage is the willingness of man to sensibly face the troubles he cannot avoid.”