Higher education should be based on quality, not quantity; receive merit-based funding; and be free of unnecessary bureaucracy. Not the least of the benefits of educational reform is to foster the pride of achievement at national and international levels.
Ahmed Zewail
The mosque was the neighbourhood house of worship, but it was also the place where my high school friends and I came to study.
Ahmed Zewail
Investing in science education and curiosity-driven research is investing in the future.
Ahmed Zewail
In the Middle East, it is clear that peace will never be reached without solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A two-state solution must be found and enforced.
Ahmed Zewail
Mubarak came to power as a hero who fought bravely in Egypt’s wars and headed the nation’s air force.
Ahmed Zewail
In today’s world, America’s soft power is commonly thought to reside in the global popularity of Hollywood movies, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Starbucks.
Ahmed Zewail
After World War II, scientific research in the U.S. was well supported. In the 1960s, when I came to America, the sky was the limit, and this conducive atmosphere enabled many of us to pursue esoteric research that resulted in America winning the lion’s share of Nobel Prizes.
Ahmed Zewail
Personally, I have been enriched by my experiences in Egypt and America, and feel fortunate to have been endowed with a true passion for knowledge.
Ahmed Zewail
Like everywhere in the world, people of the Middle East aspire to liberty and justice. They wish to have a better life and a decent education for their children.
Ahmed Zewail
The soft power of science has the potential to reshape global diplomacy.
Ahmed Zewail
Secularism will not work in Egypt any more than theocracy. What will work is governance that is guided by the Islamic values of the majority with protection of the minority rights.
Ahmed Zewail
Curiosity – the rover and the concept – is what science is all about: the quest to reveal the unknown.
Ahmed Zewail
The universe at large is full of questions that we still don’t know anything about, and there will be always young people, brilliant, who are going to make new discoveries.
Ahmed Zewail
Egypt has great potential because of the latent power of its human capital.
Ahmed Zewail
On the banks of the Nile, the Rosetta branch, I lived an enjoyable childhood in the City of Disuq, which is the home of the famous mosque, Sidi Ibrahim.
Ahmed Zewail
The so-called Arab Spring has proved that the fall of a Mubarak-like presidency does not mean the immediate rise of democracy. In spite of this, I am confident that Egypt will not return to an authoritarian governing system again, and that, with some time, it will achieve its democratic goals.
Ahmed Zewail
Human resources are just tremendous in Egypt, but we need the science base; we need the correct science base.
Ahmed Zewail
In the 1960s, I personally lived the resounding impact of President Nasser’s vision of constructing Aswan’s High Dam as a ‘national project’ for controlling the Nile irrigation and the production of electricity.
Ahmed Zewail
Syria is the proud heir of an ancient civilization that has a unique spectrum of minorities that encompasses Muslims and Christians of various denominations. There are at least ten such ethnic and religious groups.
Ahmed Zewail
Although the Nasser revolution of 1952 was secular, the culture remained deeply religious – but it was a faith of moderation and tolerance. Women made up nearly half my class at university, and my senior academic adviser there was a woman. In Alexandria, my friends were Christians and Muslims.
Ahmed Zewail
Although there exist in the world today some microbes of the soul, such as discrimination and aggression, science was and still is the core of progress for humanity and the continuity of civilization.
Ahmed Zewail
The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salifist parties are a real force in the Egyptian society.
Ahmed Zewail
Besides being a prime cause of poor economic growth, poor governance breeds corruption, which cripples investment, wastes resources, and diminishes confidence.
Ahmed Zewail
Reading was and still is my real joy.
Ahmed Zewail
On Sunday August 5, 2012, I was among a group of people who witnessed the Rover landing on Mars in real time at NASA’s Caltech-managed Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
Ahmed Zewail
In Egypt, every family is suffering from the deteriorated schooling and university system of the Mubarak regime. What families want most of all is to secure a good education for their children.
Ahmed Zewail
The family’s dream was to see me receive a high degree abroad and to return to become a university professor – on the door to my study room, a sign was placed reading ‘Dr. Ahmed,’ even though I was still far from becoming a doctor.
Ahmed Zewail
As a boy, it was clear that my inclinations were toward the physical sciences. Mathematics, mechanics, and chemistry were among the fields that gave me a special satisfaction.
Ahmed Zewail
From the dawn of history, science has probed the universe of unknowns, searching for the uniting laws of nature.
Ahmed Zewail
It turns out all molecular and biological systems have speeds of the atoms move inside them; the fastest possible speeds are determined by their molecular vibrations, and this speed is about a kilometre per second.
Ahmed Zewail
I am not one of the new media experts working all the time with my computers and the PowerPoints and things of that sort.
Ahmed Zewail
As someone from, and directly involved with, this part of the world, I am convinced Arabs are qualified to regain their glorious past.
Ahmed Zewail
The co-existence of religious values in the lives of individuals and secular rules in the governance of the state should be clearly defined.
Ahmed Zewail
When Mohamed Morsi was elected president of Egypt in 2012, many in the country, including me, were hopeful that he would become a democratic president for all Egyptians – not only for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Ahmed Zewail
It is true that Egypt’s attempt at democracy after the 2011 revolution encountered many obstacles in governance and infrastructure.
Ahmed Zewail
Shortly after Sisi was elected, his administration announced cuts of ‘subsidies’ on natural gas and energy consumption and lowered those for bread and other goods. Such action was taboo during the Mubarak and Sadat presidencies for over half a century, but Sisi was able to convince Egyptians he was taking necessary action.
Ahmed Zewail
Every effort should be made to help build the new democratic nation with reconciliation and forgiveness, for the sake of Egypt and not for the benefit of a party or a group.
Ahmed Zewail
Some consider the removal of Dr. Mohammed Morsi a coup by the army against an elected president. Others treat it as the second revolution, or the continuation of the January 25, 2011, revolution.
Ahmed Zewail
Growing up in Egypt, I never saw the country as divided as it is today. We now have two main political groupings: the Islamist parties and the civil, or liberal, political parties.
Ahmed Zewail
Some leaders think time will solve the problem. Their hope is that Assad’s regime will ultimately fall from the heavy toll of the horrors it has spawned. From past experience with such regimes, this scenario is unlikely to happen.
Ahmed Zewail
There is little doubt that an unstable Syria will destabilize the whole Middle East.
Ahmed Zewail
Syria may appear to be a small country, but it is just the type of entangled conflict that can lead to a world catastrophe. It does not take much imagination to see Syria as the Sarajevo of the 21st century, leading to world war.
Ahmed Zewail
America was and still is able to make the necessary changes to maintain research institutions that are the envy of the world.
Ahmed Zewail
The youth movement is aware that old visions can not take Egypt into the future.
Ahmed Zewail
Investment in education and economic prosperity is the best way to cure fanaticism and for establishing a just peace in the Middle East.
Ahmed Zewail
Egypt was the first democracy in the Middle East. Women were unveiled in the 1920s. Egypt is a country of civilization, of culture. It shouldn’t be suffering.
Ahmed Zewail
I’d rather have the influence than the power, and the influence to me is to build institutions of independence and democracy, to regain for Egypt prestige in education and science and technology.
Ahmed Zewail
I think I succeeded in getting the Egyptian people excited about the importance of science, and this is the only way Egypt can get out of this dark ages.
Ahmed Zewail
Let me put it this way: There is nothing in Islam that is fundamentally against the quest for knowledge.
Ahmed Zewail
Our femtosecond snapshots can examine a molecule at discrete instants in time.
Ahmed Zewail
Egypt had the first constitution in the Middle East that allowed for liberty. And it had democracy.
Ahmed Zewail
Everybody in the world is – is ready for liberty. It’s a question of how you do it.
Ahmed Zewail