Alija Izetbegović

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.

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

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.

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.

It is difficult to help a man without hurting his pride. Everyone wants to be a giver and not a receiver.

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.

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.

Socialism and freedom are not compatible, regardless of repeated convincings.

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?'

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.

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.

History sometimes makes fun of us and our best intentions.

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.

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

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.

Our goal: the Islamization of Muslims. Our methods: to believe and to struggle.

Advantages of freedom do not have to be proved by something outside freedom itself. It is its own underwriter.

We Bosniaks would for sure fight for integrity of Bosnia.

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

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.

I took revenge on hardship from my earlier life by forgetting it.

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.

Life is a dangerous thing. Insecurity is the price of living.

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

Islam is a way of living rather than a way of thinking.