Academics From Iran

"Zarif went. We are rid of him."

"He [Zarif] is a very shrewd person and a very charming person and a very shrewd negotiator."

"He was among the very best students that I’ve ever taught, He’s just a very nice person."

"[He was] good in the classroom. At that time ... I thought he'd play an important part in his country's life."

"The art of a diplomat is to conceal all turbulence behind his smile."

"Iran never denied it [The Holocaust]. The man who was perceived to be denying it (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) is now gone."

""In order to practice dialogue, you need to be able to set aside your assumptions and try to listen more than you want to talk. It’s not always politically correct to be able to do that, but it can give you a better sense of the reality. I have benefited from the knowledge and the information that all these people have been able to provide to me. I have disagreements with some and more agreements with others. But that doesn’t mean I cannot listen to those I disagree with." According to"

"His (Donald Trump) threats will not frighten us. But what he is showing something- he is showing to the International community that he has no respect for International law, that he is prepared to commit war crimes because attacking cultural sites is a war crime and disproportionate response is a war crime. But he doesn't care, it seems, about International law. But he has made U.S. more secure? Do Americans feel more secure? Are Americans welcome today in this region? Do they feel welcome?"

""Currently, Americans have focused on psychological warfare and are doing their best to place psychological pressure on Iranians and our international partners." (during an interview with the state TV). IFP News (2018-08-26)."

""All ethnicities and groups in Syria should begin the process of reconstruction within a single unit under the Syrian flag."(during his visit to Damascus on September 2018). IFP News (2018-09-03)."

"Beautiful military equipment don't rule the world, People rule the world. People."

"The concept of a velvet revolution in Iran should not be considered as groundless fear."

"We do not jail people for their opinions[.]"

"In September 2013, a month after Obama backed down from launching strikes against Assad to punish him for using chemical weapons, he and President Rouhani spoke on the phone while they were both at the UN General Assembly. The Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, and the US secretary of state, John Kerry, sat down for a tête-à-tête. It was the highest level of contact between the two countries since 1979. The Saudis were shocked and felt deeply betrayed. They had long since moved on from the era of détente in the 1990s and had a particular aversion to back channels between Iran and the United States. They’d felt betrayed before by such talks, and it made them feel deeply insecure about their place in the Middle East and their role as America’s top ally in the Arab world. The Saudi-US alliance, based on oil for security, had its limitations, and the relationship had been sorely tested by events like the September 11 attacks. Meanwhile, there were policymakers in Washington who felt Iran held more promise of turning into a democracy than a desert kingdom with an absolute monarchy. The Saudis were apoplectic when they heard such musings. The Obama administration also believed that if a deal could be reached while the reformers were in power, an improved economy would further strengthen the reformers and show how much the hardliners had failed the people."

""He’s a craftsman. The proof is the 123 lives that we brought back to their families and homes"."

"He [Zarif] was intelligent, courteous, disciplined, interesting to talk to, I conducted the conversation to educate myself, so I did not try to persuade him [Zarif] of any particular approach, except my basic theme was that, on the basis of national interests, there is no conflict between Iran and the United States. Everything beyond that is ideological."

"[T]he successes of modern control theory in the design of highly accurate space navigation systems have stimulated its use in the theoretical analyses of economic and biological systems. Similarly, the effectiveness of computer simulation techniques in the macroscopic analyses of physical systems has brought into vogue the use of computer-based econometric models for purposes of forecasting, economic planning, arid management."

"It was a biologist — Ludwig von Bertalanffy — who long ago perceived the essential unity of system concepts and techniques in the various fields of science and who in writings and lectures sought to attain recognition for “general systems theory” as a distinct scientific discipline. It is pertinent to note, however, that the work of Bertalannfy and his school, being motivated primarily by problems arising in the study of biological systems, is much more empirical and qualitative in spirit than the work of those system theorists who received their training in exact sciences. In fact, there is a fairly wide gap between what might be regarded as “animate” system theorists and “inanimate” system theorists at the present time, and it is not at all certain that this gap will be narrowed, much less closed, in the near future. There are some who feel this gap reflects the fundamental inadequacy of the conventional mathematics—the mathematics of precisely defined points, functions, sets, probability measures, etc.—for coping with the analysis of biological systems, and that to deal effectively with such systems, we need a radically different kind of mathematics, the mathematics of fuzzy or cloudy quantities which are not describable in terms of probability distributions. Indeed the need for such mathematics is becoming increasingly apparent even in the realms of inanimate systems"

"A fuzzy set is a class of objects with a continuum of grades of membership. Such a set is characterized by a membership (characteristic) function which assigns to each object a grade of membership ranging between zero and one. The notions of inclusion, union, intersection, complement, relation, convexity, etc., are extended to such sets, and various properties of these notions in the context of fuzzy sets are established. In particular, a separation theorem for convex fuzzy sets is proved without requiring that the fuzzy sets be disjoint."

"More often than not, the classes of objects encountered in the real physical world do not have precisely defined criteria of membership. For example, the class of animals clearly includes dogs, horses, birds, etc. as its members, and clearly excludes such objects as rocks, fluids, plants, etc. However, such objects as starfish, bacteria, etc. have an ambiguous status with respect to the class of animals. The same kind of ambiguity arises in the case of a number such as 10 in relation to the “class” of all real numbers which are much greater than 1."

"In general, complexity and precision bear an inverse relation to one another in the sense that, as the complexity of a problem increases, the possibility of analysing it in precise terms diminishes. Thus 'fuzzy thinking' may not be deplorable, after all, if it makes possible the solution of problems which are much too complex for precise analysis."

"[ Fuzzy logic is ] a logic whose distinguishing features are (i) fuzzy truth-values expressed in linguistic terms, e.g., true, very true, more or less true, or somewhat true, false, nor very true and not very false, etc2.; (2) imprecise truth tables; and (3) rules of inference whose validity is relative to a context rather than exact."

"A linguistic variable is defined as a variable whose values are sentences in a natural or artificial language."

"The advent of the Computer age has stimulated a rapid expansion in the use of quantitative techniques for the analysis of economic, urban, social, biological and other types of systems in which it is the animate rather than in dominant role. At present, most of the techniques employed for the analysis of humanistic, i.e., human centred systems are adaptations of the methods that have been developed over a long period of time for dealing with mechanistic systems, i.e., physical systems governed in the main by-the laws of mechanics, electromagnetism, and thermodynamics. The remarkable successes of these methods in unraveling the secrets of nature and enabling us to build better and better machines have inspired a widely held belief that the same or similar techniques can be applied with comparable effectiveness to the analysis of humanistic systems."

"A linguistic variable is a variable whose values are words or sentences in a natural or synthetic language."

"Essentially, a fuzzy algorithm is an ordered sequence of instructions (like a computer program) in which some of the instructions may contain labels or fuzzy sets, e.g.: Reduce x slightly if y is very large Increase x very slightly if y is not very large and not very small If x is small then stop; otherwise increase x by 2."

"The question really isn't whether I'm American, Russian, Iranian, Azerbaijani, or anything else. I've been shaped by all these people and cultures and I feel quite comfortable among all of them."

"A frequent source of misunderstanding has to do with the interpretation of fuzzy logic. The problem is that the term fuzzy logic has two different meanings. More specifically, in a narrow sense, fuzzy logic, FLn, is a logical system which may be viewed as an extension and generalization of classical multivalued logics. But in a wider sense, fuzzy logic, FLw is almost synonymous with the theory of fuzzy sets. In this context, what is important to recognize is that: (a) FLw is much broader than FLn and subsumes FLn as one of its branches; (b) the agenda of FLn is very different from the agendas of classical multivalued logics; and (c) at this juncture, the term fuzzy logic is usually used in its wide rather than narrow sense, effectively equating fuzzy logic with FLw"

"To what degree is something true or false?"

"The term fuzzy logic is used in this paper to describe an imprecise logical system, FL, in which the truth-values are fuzzy subsets of the unit interval with linguistic labels such as true, false, not true, very true, quite true, not very true and not very fake, etc.... As a consequence, the truth tables and the rules of inference in fuzzy logic are (i) inexact and (ii) dependent on the meaning associated with the primary truth-value true as well as the modifiers very quite."

"Well, I knew it was going to be important. That much I knew. In fact, I had thought about sealing it in a dated envelope with my predictions and then opening it 20-30 years later to see if my intuitions were right. I realized this paper marked a new direction. I used to think about it this way-that one day Fuzzy Logic would turn out to be one of the most important things to come out of our Electrical Engineering Computer Systems Division at Berkeley. I never dreamed it would become a worldwide phenomenon. My expectations were much more modest."

"In many, many fields. I expected people in the social sciences-economics, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, politics, sociology, religion and numerous other areas to pick up on it. It's been somewhat of a mystery to me why even to this day, so few social scientists have discovered how useful it could be. Instead, Fuzzy Logic was first embraced by engineers and used in industrial process controls and in "smart" consumer products such as hand-held camcorders that cancel out jittering and microwaves that cook your food perfectly at the touch of a single button. I didn't expect it to play out this way back in 1965."

"I can't say that anything has been "exciting". Rather, I would choose the word "interesting". Not too long ago, the Chinese University of Hong Kong conducted a survey to determine which consumer products were using Fuzzy Logic. The result was a thick report, some 150-200 pages long-washing machines, camcorders, microwave ovens, etc. What interested me wasn't the particular applications so much as the breadth of applications-so many products were incorporating Fuzzy Logic."

"I would like to comment briefly on Professor Zadeh's presentation. His proposals could be severely, ferociously, even brutally criticized from a technical point of view. This would be out of place here. But a blunt question remains: Is professor Zadeh presenting important ideas or is he indulging in wishful thinking? No doubt Professor Zadeh's enthusiasm for fuzziness has been reinforced by the prevailing climate in the U.S.-one of unprecedented permissiveness. 'Fuzzification, is a kind of scientific permissiveness; it tends to result in socially appealing slogans unaccompanied by the discipline of hard scientific work and patient observation."

"Conceptual graphs (CGs) (Sowa 1976; 1984) and fuzzy logic (Zadeh 1965; 1975a) are two logical formalisms that emphasize the target of natural language, each of which is focused on one of the two mentioned desired features of a logic for handling natural language. Conceptual graphs, based on semantic networks and Peirce's existential graphs, combine the visual advantage of graphical languages and the expressive power of logic."

"As an indispensable constituent of AI, fuzzy logic is a superset of conventional (Boolean) logic that has been extended to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value can range between completely true and completely false. As the creator of a new field of mathematics—fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic—Lotfi Zadeh’s intellectual contributions are myriad. He is also known for his research in system theory, information processing, AI, expert systems, natural language understanding, and the theory of evidence. His current research is focused on fuzzy logic, computing with words, and soft computing, which is a coalition of fuzzy logic, neurocomputing, evolutionary computing, probabilistic computing, and parts of machine learning"

"Pope John Paul II was a seeker of truth, justice and peace. Pope John Paul II was a disciple of religious mysticism, philosophic deliberation and thought and artistic and poetic creativity, By emphasising his experience and teachings, (he) earnestly tried to utilise them in the path of the triumph of truth, justice and peace. It is hoped that the leadership of Catholic Christianity, by following the teachings of the Prophet Jesus, may peace be upon him, by interacting with justice seeking and peace loving political-religious leaders and by also following the ethical and humanitarian thinking of John Paul II, help the world towards a better and more just life."

"Terrorism, which means killing civilians in whatever name or title, lacks morality, and nobody who lacks such principle will go to heaven."

"In response on the motives of suicide bombers, he said that, Those who put others through hell will never go to heaven"."

"After years of fundamentalist rule, Iranian voters, especially women and lower-income people, selected a moderate cleric, Mohammad Khatami, as president in 1997, giving him almost 70 percent of the vote. Khatami was also reelected in 2001 to serve into the year 2005. President Khatami attempted to increase the level of democracy, enhance women’s rights, and pursue friendlier relations with the US and its allies. However, his ability to carry out reforms or modify Iran’s foreign policy was limited because fundamentalists continued to dominate the courts, armed forces, and police. Most importantly, President Khatami’s power as head of government was superseded by Iran’s head of state, the fundamentalist supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran’s moderate politicians were weakened by US President George W. Bush’s hostile attitude toward Iran after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In response, voters in 2005 elected an Iranian president more openly critical of Bush administration policy, fundamentalist-supported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

"Allow me also, on behalf of the Asian Group including the Malaysian delegation, to record our appreciation to his Excellency President Khatami of the Islamic Republic of Iran for his dedication and contributions during his tenure as the chairman (Islamic Summit). Iran's role in the furtherance of Islamic causes is not new to us and we are most grateful for its untiring effort."

"Must I always send a message for everything," when asked why he had not responded to the award for Shirin Ebadi, the first Iranian Nobel Prize winner, four days after it was made. "The Nobel Peace Prize is not very important, the ones that count are the scientific and literary prizes," he added. However it seemed in those early remarks, Khatami was trying to reduce conservatives anger over Shirin Ebadi, who wore no hijab while accepting the prize in the ceremony, because later Khatami in an interview reported by Iran press service.com () on December 12, 2003 said: "The Nobel Prize is very important in all domains; it is obvious that every Iranian must be proud to know that another Iranian, especially an Iranian woman, got this Prize. This said, more important than the prize of the peace is peace itself. Our world is a world of war, a world of terror and violence, a world of illness and famine, a world of discrimination", he replied when observed that the welcome reserved to the laureate in Iran was "tepid". "Politic is always an important factor. She continues her work, a work that, I hope, she would be able to pursue freely in Iran. I also know that she had some problems"

"In order to understand the meaning of the phrase dialogue among civilizations as defined here, one has no choice but to closely pay attention to a number of points one of which is the relationship between a politician and an artist, and the other is the relationship between ethics and politics."

"A basic change in political ethics is required for the realization of the proposal [The dialog among civilizations]."

"Liberalism is the world's religion. We do not have the right to insult liberalism."

"Without a doubt, we will succeed in moving forward, only if we have the capacity to reap the benefit of positive, scientific and social accomplishments of Western civilization."

"Secularism is the experience of the Western culture and thought. Insisting on spreading it to places where the underlying intellectual background, and the political and social reasons for its appearance are lacking, is clearly a mistake, regardless of being desirable or not."

"Of course we may assume many general and non-historical meanings for secularism, but turning a subject that is in all its existence a historical matter into a non-historical matter is a blatant mistake."

"I don't like the death penalty, although if there is one case where there should be an execution, the fairest case would be for Saddam. But I would never wish for that."

"...the policies that the United States has chosen unfortunately have brought about the wrong sentiment toward the United States and has only increased, and will only increase, extremism in our region."