All Quotes

"I had the places, the toponyms, the people also in memory and in my imagination."

"I began to work there, the local bibliography in French and English was of the order of a tenth of that on Kabylie and the delay is very far from being filled, while there is little work in Arabic elsewhere."

"I would add that the geography as well as the material manifestations of the culture are especially beautiful, and that many of my anthropologist colleagues envied me this choice, which was barely one."

"It's first and foremost a European name that resonates in the heights of the Aurès massif."

"A miller of Italian origin who, having lived in the region, knows the massif better than anyone."

"If we hadn't known, we would never have guessed that he wasn't from around here."

"I felt as though I knew nothing and was entirely self-taught when I began working on the subject."

"I had grown up in a village, Meskiana, and that rural life had deeply shaped me."

"My father wanted me to learn Arabic, so I attended a Qur’anic school for a while during the holidays, before entering high school."

"I saw how children were taught to think."

"I experienced in my own body what the kuttāb was: the cross legged posture, the role of speech and recitation, the swaying of bodies, the love for the calligraphy of letters on the clay coated tablet."

"My article on repetition (Colonna, 1980b) is precisely an analysis of these techniques used to shape thought."

"I loved the kuttāb; I no longer have my childhood lawḥ (tablet), but I bought one for a dinar during my first fieldwork in the Aurès it appears as a frontispiece in Les Versets."

"I attended the reformist Médersa in my village, and there I clearly saw the difference with the Qur’anic school"

"The teacher’s straight trousers and white shirt, the bench and blackboard, the students seated in rows, the discipline of bodies."

"Both types of education left a mark on me the two bodily postures as well as the revelation of the gap that existed between them."

"Learned Islam has given rise to so many studies! By contrast, the anthropology of Islam as the daily practice of its actors has attracted almost no interest."

"What fascinated me at the outset of this research was that there were no detailed studies of ordinary religious practice."

"For a long time, the social sciences gave an image of the Maghreb as a society Islamized without Islam."

"Despite the production, from the end of the first third of the 19th century, of works on religion, the authors seemed to oscillate mainly between two interpretations of North African societies."

"Religion was omnipresent, or it played no role at all in social construction."

"In the important works of Basset (1961) or Laoust (1920), for example, there is no section on religion."

"Gellner did indeed show that the "saints," that is, the religious lineages, had a dual function."

"Serving as arbiters among the "secular," acephalous tribes, where power is by nature unstable, and as mediators with universal Islam, the city, and the Prince, as descendants of the Prophet and “incarnate Word,” that is, carriers of the uncreated Word of God, the Qur’an."

"As for Masqueray, Montagne, and Maunier prominent names in the early sociology of the Maghreb they belonged to the dominant theoretical tradition of Durkheimian sociology in the nascent social sciences."

"Too honest as observers to deny the importance of Islam, they nevertheless produced theoretical constructions that shifted the focus to other elements of social organization (the city, intertribal pacts, customary law)."

"It is indeed with the tālib that one must begin."

"Actions only make sense if we try to grasp their meanings."

"Italians are, in practice, illiterate. It is an emotional illiteracy that prevents us from understanding others."

"An economic crisis, however serious, never has such a profound impact on the individual conscience as the desolate lack of meaning that characterizes depression."

"Some ideals are strong bulwarks, while others fade away, leaving behind an unsustainable backlash."

"Nothing gives a person the same strength to resist adversity and pain as Christian, Pascalian hope."

"When certainties fail, we can only save ourselves on that raft where solidarity with others gives meaning to our sacrifice."

"Only an inner education allows us to look at reality and distinguish what really matters."

"Let us take the examination of conscience, a Christian expression that seems so dinosaur-like, so obsolete. In reality, this examination taught us to look inside ourselves every evening, to see what we had done wrong, and therefore our limitations, and then to ask for help to change: which already implied a new hope for the day to come."

"The very act of praying every morning introduces us to a day that is more open to hope; which is never just for ourselves, but also for others, and even for those we do not know."

"This, after all, is the greatest rationality: knowing that life is much more than all our accounts, than all our reasonable predictions."

"We must educate ourselves to recognize our inner resonances when we meet others, work, and dream."

"The experience of infinity, in all its forms, brings us closer to God."

"Depression pushes us to fully grasp what we are experiencing, and thus our ability to understand others also increases."

"The category of the future is the one that is most erased today from an existential and psychological point of view."

"Where there is an experience of pain, the perception of the insufficiency of external, ephemeral, temporary pleasures immediately grows, and the desire for something that transcends the contingent grows."

"If our eyes are wet with tears, eyes that allow us to empathize with the inner life of the sick person, with their pain, to see the wounded soul deep in their eyes, then we will be able to help."

"He published in 1943 a history of Rwanda in Kinyarwanda called Inganji Karinga, drawing on information from the royal Abiru."

"He translated the New Testament into Kinyarwanda, wrote the Missal books, and other liturgical books; he also wrote many essays, poems, and philosophical works"

"He was known for his commitment to promoting the Kinyarwanda language and Rwandan culture through his writings."

"It really helped me put in perspective that we’re part of a larger global community. And we need to be thinking about the decisions we are making because they impact Columbia, but they also have a role to play with our neighbors across state lines and oceans."

"“I’m really thankful that I have professional city staff who run the day-to-day, whether I’m in town or not"

"It’s kind of nice to be with your peers and find out that you’re all dealing with a lot of the same issues,It doesn’t matter what city or state you’re in — blue, red ... whatever. They’re all just trying to think about community safety and housing and just people’s mental health."

"I was able to help put Columbia on the map. ... People talk about Missouri being a flyover state. So when they think about climate research reactors, they think about Boston, and Minnesota and the California coast And yet ... we have this amazing resource here."