Daily Inspiration Quote by Shirin Ebadi

In one short line, Shirin Ebadi turns a profession most countries treat as boringly procedural into a frontline occupation. “Dangerous” is doing the heavy lifting: it doesn’t mean long hours or hostile cross-examinations; it implies surveillance, harassment, imprisonment, and the very real possibility that the state will punish you for performing the job as it’s supposed to be performed. Ebadi isn’t dramatizing lawyering. She’s indicting a system where due process is treated as dissent.

The intent is strategic, almost minimalist. By refusing to name specific officials, factions, or cases, Ebadi makes the claim portable and hard to dismiss as a one-off scandal. It’s not “I was threatened,” it’s “the role itself is criminalized.” That shift matters: it frames the problem as structural, not personal, and it quietly rebukes the regime’s preferred story that “bad actors” are the issue rather than the rules of the game.

The subtext is also a defense of the idea of law. If lawyers are in danger, then the courtroom isn’t a neutral arena; it’s an extension of political control. In Iran’s modern context - especially in cases involving political prisoners, women’s rights, journalists, or religious minorities - the lawyer can become a witness, a messenger, and a target. Ebadi, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights attorney, speaks from lived experience: the sentence doubles as a warning to the world and a measure of how threatening accountability can be to power.