Influence and Sacrifices
The Cultural Revolution united the theological schools in Qom with state universities and brought secular teachers to Qom for a time. This had the unexpected result of exposing many students in Qom to Western thought, so that it is possible to find "clerics and teachers of theology who know something of contemporary Western thought and philosophy."
Another aspect was that many teachers and technocrats left Iran to escape the Cultural Revolution. While the revolution achieved it goal of ridding the universities of Western influence, it also greatly weakened Iran in the fields of science and technology needed for development.
Read more about this topic: Iranian Cultural Revolution, Islamization of Universities
Famous quotes containing the words influence and, influence and/or sacrifices:
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The merit of those who fill a space in the world’s history, who are borne forward, as it were, by the weight of thousands whom they lead, shed a perfume less sweet than do the sacrifices of private virtue.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)