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Better that he take risks than that he ends up a shrinking violet like Ahmad Shah Qajar.
--
As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 241
--
In colloquial Persian, Ahmad Shah Qajar is a byword for ineptitude.

 

Muhammad Reza Pahlavi

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The question is not whether to take risks, but which ones to take. The peril of being reasonable is that you will miss all the fun. It’s not enough to cautiously edge your way toward the cliff. Learn to revel in taking risks for the sake of your soul. Every choice you make gives birth instantly to certain risks as surely as your shadow follows you.

 

Nicholas Lore

 

When I was born 20.6.(18)87, I was influenced by Picasso to cry. When I could walk and speak I still stood under Picasso’s influence and said to my mother: ‘Tom’ or ‘Happening’ meaning the entrances of the canal under the street. My lyrical time was when I lived in the Violet Street. I never saw a violet. That was my influenced by Matisse because when he painted rose I did not paint violet. As a boy of ten I stood under Mondrian’s influence and built little houses with little bricks. Afterwards I stood under the influence of the Surrealists... In never stood under the influence of Dadaism because whereas the Dadaist created Spiegeldadaismus on the Zurich Lake, I created MERZ on the Leineriver, under the influence of Rembrandt. Time went on, and when Hans Arp made concrete Art, I stayed Abstract. Now I do concrete Art, and Marcel Duchamp went over to the Surrealists... and at all I have much fun about Art.

 

Kurt Schwitters

 

The Shah's rule was a mixture of failures and successes; neither all one nor all the other. Some of the vaunted economic and developmental achievements were impressive- others were shallow and superficial. But in the end the important failures were primarily political- the Shah had no programme for restoring representative government and his only solution for dissent was repression.If he had succeeded in making the monarchy truly popular, perhaps he could have sustained that for a time- but instead the monarchy became more remote and disconnected from the attitudes and concerns of ordinary Iranians.

 

Muhammad Reza Pahlavi

 

I watched president Carter on TV toasting the Shah on New Year's Eve, and thought it was one of the silliest things I'd ever seen,? especially when the Shah lifted his champagne glass. And I thought "We're in a muslim country, he's celebrating an American holiday, by toasting with alcohol. Isnt this dumb? Doesnt he know anything about his own country? The people in his own country?"

 

Muhammad Reza Pahlavi

 

Rather than respond to the spiritual and material needs of his people, a course which would have immortalized him as a great reformer, [the Shah] chose to pursue a personal, fleeting glory. A system which might have been capable of rescuing Iran from backwardness and misery was allowed to collapse. The Shah could not bear the idea of democratic participation in the political decision-making process, nor could he tolerate the prospect that someone else might gain a degree of popularity. Herein lay his tragedy. He saw any successful or respected personality as a potential opponent.

 

Muhammad Reza Pahlavi