"It is quite common to hear high officials in Washington and elsewhere speak of changing the map of the Middle East, as if ancient societies and myriad peoples can be shaken up like so many peanuts in …"

"The intellectual is someone who cares about the truth, and not about his own career."

"The Orient is not an inert fact of nature. It is not merely 'there,' as the Occident is. It is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality…"

"The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences."

"The role of the intellectual is to disturb the status quo, to challenge established truths, to question authority."