Browsing Topic Best Istanbul Quotes

Either I conquer Istanbul or Istanbul conquers me.

The Turks can be killed, but they can never be conquered.

If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.

The kind of power mothers have is enormous. Take the skyline of Istanbul – enormous breasts, pathetic little willies, a final revenge on Islam. I was so scared I had to crouch in the bottom of the boat when I saw it.

I think the same around the world. At 350.org we just trained 500 young people from around the world in Istanbul for a few weeks. We had 5000 applications from young people who wanted to be part of the training. There’s real hunger out there.

The kind of power mothers have is enormous.

Istanbul is inspiring because it has its own code of architecture, literature, poetry, music.

Istanbul, a universal beauty where poet and archeologist, diplomat and merchant, princess and sailor, northerner and westerner screams with same admiration. The whole world thinks that this city is the most beautiful place on earth.

I read, read enormously on all different fields of Islamic thought, from philosophy to Islamic literature, poetry, exegeses, knowledge of the Hadith, the teachings of the prophet. That’s how I trained myself. And then I was appointed imam by a Sufi master from Istanbul, Turkey.

He was one of the masters of the thriller and he really was one of the great signposts, because he took the spy thriller out of the gentility of the drawing room and into the back streets of Istanbul and where it all really happened, … The Day of the Jackal.

Istanbul owes its extraordinary situation to Golden Horn, Marmara Sea and The Bosphorus.

?stanbul is a magical seal which unites Europe and Asia since the ancient times. Without a doubt, Istanbul is certainly the most beautiful place of the world.

I like to borrow a metaphor from the great poet and mystic Rumi who talks about living like a drawing compass. One leg of the compass is static. It is fixed and rooted in a certain spot. Meanwhile, the other leg draws a huge wide circle around the first one, constantly moving. Just like that, one part of my writing is based in Istanbul. It has strong local roots. Yet at the same time the other part travels the whole wide world, feeling connected to several cities, cultures, and peoples.

Istanbul these days has as much dynamism as New York.

I see more people taking on the cloak of accountability, more people tiring of the blame game. If we are all connected and our actions in Australia affect us in Istanbul, then we are all to blame and all to be healers. We can’t blame lawyers anymore for the ‘liability’ vs. common sense imbalance.

I once stayed in a roach-infested hotel in Istanbul for a work trip. I had to share my room with a male model, and pointedly all we talked about was our other halves.

If the Earth were a single state, Istanbul would be its capital.

The terrorists who committed the 2003 Istanbul attacks were locals, that is, Turks. And when filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in the Netherlands last year, the murderer and his supporters were also part of the Muslim community.

We spent a month in Japan last year, a week in Istanbul for the United Nations, and nearly three months in my native Nova Scotia, where my two brothers have homes; and we’ll go back there this summer.

I found that the loudest fans in the world are in Istanbul.

I went to Istanbul. I spoke to blind people, most of whom had lost their sight suddenly. I asked them to describe the last thing they saw.

Istanbul … the constant beating of the wave of the East against the rock of the West.

When it comes to emotions, we all feel pain in the same way, everyone, whether you’re from Istanbul or Beijing.

Beginning in 1939, there were events well to the east of Istanbul that seems to have started a progressive sequence to the west. The question is, will the sequence continue further … Unfortunately, we think the answer is yes.

Vodafone is building a digital stadium in Istanbul. It is really worth going to see that. The whole experience will change with the possibilities viewers will have.

The first thing I learned at school was that some people are idiots; the second thing I learned was that some are even worse.

Life can’t be all that bad,’ i’d think from time to time. ‘Whatever happens, i can always take a long walk along the Bosphorus.

Istanbul is a vast place. There are very conservative neighbourhoods, there are places that are upper class, Westernised, consuming Western culture.

I think perhaps it is a generational thing. I talk to younger people and they say, Where is this melancholy city you talk about My Istanbul is a sunny place.

National consciousness is truly a miraculous thing. When I am not in Turkey I feel even more Turkish than in Istanbul. But when I’m home my European side becomes more apparent.

It was in Cihangir that i first learned Istanbul was not an anonymous multitude of walled-in lives – a jungle of apartments where no one knew who was dead or who was celebrating what – but an archipelago of neighbourhoods in which everyone knew each other.

To savour Istanbul’s back streets, to appreciate the vines and trees that endow its ruins with accidental grace, you must, first and foremost, be a stranger to them.

Holy Istanbul! Your name is the most enchanting one of all names which enchants me.

So you set out to travel to Rome… and end up in Istanbul. You set off for Japan… and you end up on a train across Siberia. The journey, not the destination, becomes a source of wonder.