#NashirAlDinAlTusi

“While his civilization burned, Ṭūsī made a choice most philosophers in this book never faced: serve the destroyer and save the books, or refuse and burn with them. He served. Seven centuries later, we still argue about whether to thank him.”

“Knowledge can survive the end of the world — if someone is willing to stand next to the man ending it. Ṭūsī rescued Avicenna's philosophy from its critics, wrote the East's definitive ethics, and turned a Mongol warlord's superstition into history's best-funded observatory.”