This document contains quotes from several Arab scholars throughout history on a variety of topics: Ibn Khaldun notes that history often repeats itself and that merchant-owned businesses will surpass those owned by rulers. While nations can suffer physical defeats, psychological defeats mark their end. Dynasties also rarely last beyond three generations. Other quotes discuss forgetting one's desires to focus on God, how knowledge and ignorance are perceived, how illness affects the body and sin affects the heart, the role of justice in a city, how ignorance breeds fear and violence, and how tax revenue changes over a dynasty's lifespan. Ibn Khaldun also comments on how prejudice can obscure critical thinking and allow falsehoods to

1. The past resembles the future more than one drop of water
resembles another.
Ibn Khaldun

2. Businesses owned by responsible and organized
merchants shall eventually surpass those owned by
wealthy rulers.
Ibn Khaldun

3. Throughout history many nations have suffered a
physical defeat, but that has never marked the end of a
nation. But when a nation has become the victim of a
psychological defeat, then that marks the end of a nation.
Ibn Khaldun

4. The term of life of a dynasty does not normally exceed three
generations. For in the first generation are still preserved the
characteristic features of rough, uncivilized rural life, such as
hard conditions of life, courage, ferocity, and partnership in
authority.
Therefore the strength of the 'Asabiya is maintained ...
Asabiya (social solidarity)
Ibn Khaldun

5. Ikhlaas is to forget the vision of creation by constantly
looking at the Creator.
Al-Jahiz

6. “Two truths cannot contradict one another.”
Ibn Rushd

7. “Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect”
Ibn Rushd

8. How can the heart travel to God,
when it is chained by its desires?
Ibn Arabi

9. The ignorant one does not see his ignorance as he
basks in its darkness; nor does the knowledgeable one
see his own knowledge, for he basks in its light
Ibn Arabi

10. The body's weakness comes from illnesses,
while the heart's weakness comes from sins.
And just as the body does not taste the delights of food
when it is ill, the heart does not taste the delights of
worship when it is sinful.
Dhul-Nun al-Misri

11. “A just city should favor justice and the just, hate tyranny
and injustice, and give them both their just deserts.”
Al-Farabi

12. Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate, and hate leads
to violence. This is the equation.
Ibn Rushd

13. At the beginning of a dynasty, taxation yields a large
revenue from small assessments.
At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue
from large assessments.
Ibn Khaldun

14. If the soul is impartial in receiving information, it devotes to
that information the share of critical investigation the
information deserves, and its truth or untruth thus becomes
clear.
However, if the soul is infected with partisanship for a
particular opinion or sect, it accepts without a moment's
hesitation the information that is agreeable to it.
Prejudice and partisanship obscure the critical faculty and
preclude critical investigation.
The results is that falsehoods are accepted and transmitted.
Ibn Khaldun

15. The past resembles the future more than one drop of
water resembles another.
Ibn Khaldun