Ahmad Kasravi on Knowledge

"I had to become a mullah after studying, and apart to my father's will, I hated the mullah myself."

"If you have heard that Dr. Zamenhof has created a language called Esperanto from the rules of knowledge, the ease of which is amazing, we should follow the same rules in adorning the Persian language and make this language very easy."

"Today, one of the problems of Iran, in fact, its worst problem, is the dispersal of Iranians. People who share a common land and live within the territory of one country should not be divided into rival sects. Today's Iran is in this misery, and if this continues, God knows what a hard hand the Iranians will suffer."

"All Iranians with little knowledge are concerned about the country's backwardness - especially the decline of Iran from a large and powerful empire to a weak and small state. Where is the root of degeneration? At the turn of the century, intellectuals could claim that the main culprits were tyrants who had a hidden interest in the illiteracy and ignorance of the people of the country. But in fact, twenty years after the constitutional government, we can not give the same answer. We now know that the main fault lies not with the rulers but with the obedient. Yes, the main cause of underdevelopment in Iran, and perhaps in most Eastern countries, is division and discord among the masses."

"In Hokmavar, because many people were illiterate, they did not value literacy and there was no Maktab there. Only one mullah named Mullah Bakhshali taught us to read the Qur'an. He himself was not very literate and did not know Persian well, and because his teeth were missing, his words were difficult to understand. His art was to beat the hands and feet of children. People did not want anything more than this and saw education in beating children. However, from the day I went to Maktab, I did not give up because I wanted knowledge until I understood the lesson. I learned the alphabet in a week. Then I learned some lessons in Quranic chapters from mullah Bakhshali and learned the rest myself."

"As we have seen, they created a small group of constitutionalists in Iran, and many people did not know the meaning of constitutionalism, and it is clear that they did not want it either. At the beginning of its rise, the constitutional movement, above all, had the character of "Shiism" in order to gradually acquire the character of "patriotism". This duplicity also appeared in the newspapers, and the newspaper Sur-e Esrafil followed this new practice from the very beginning, and its writers showed a good knowledge of the history of Europe and the countries there, and over this innovation, animosities arose with them."