returns in human capital, which is the bedrock of sustainability that will ultimately determine the success or failure of our future endeavors.
In an unpublished article entitled 2.5% to Spare on Thinking , I expressed my confidence in our ability to revive our golden age and enrich mankind as we did during the early days of Islam. This process can begin, I explained, in the same land where the Creator’s message was revealed. This is the time and place to embark on our future goals and lead the Arab and Islamic worlds by empowering youth to be the agents of positive change in their societies. [59] My hopes and expertise stem from my deep faith in Allah and my pledge to serve this great nation and its good people. While we have faced our fair share of disappointments and failures, this does not mean that we give up. With our good intentions, firm piety, and the skills of our young citizens, we will keep building and stay steadfast on the path that Allah has set before us.
I conclude these contemplations on the most salient stages of my career by quoting an article I wrote for Okaz on 24 th September 1998 entitled National Day is King Abdulaziz Day , [60] in which I said:
Abdulaziz is the spirit shaped by the desert a nd the desert was in turn shaped by. The desert’s purity had a strong impact on him, which he once expressed by saying, ‘I lived 25 years in the desert. I toiled, suffered, and was wounded in battle. For me, this has rendered life nothing in light of Allah ’s grace… Having grown up in the desert, I do not know proper speaking etiquette and all of its flowery embellishments. But what I do know is that truth is devoid of falsehoods. I also believe in the saying ‘A man possesses three main virtues: rel igion, valor, and honor. If one of these virtues slips away, so too does his humanity.’ About the man that he wants to build this nation, Abdulaziz said: ‘I want men who work with honesty, intelligence, and devotion, so that if I face any challenges from time to time, I could turn to them for advice. Knowing that they will take responsibility keeps my conscience clear. I want people who speak candidly. The three kinds of men I despise the most and will never tolerate are liars, dissenters, and flatterers. Those are the most loathsome types of men to me.’
May Allah rest King Abdulaziz’s soul in peace and reward him for what his nation and its people have achieved.
As a citizen, I feel it is my obligation to confer my beliefs by drawing on past experiences to help the nation succeed in achieving its new vision. This comes from a place of hope and optimism about the current state of the Kingdom. [62] Today’s achieve ments in Saudi Arabia amount to a series of rapid steps towards the transformation, development, and change needed to keep up with current global shifts. We must take the initiative by investing in our long-lasting wealth and harnessing the potential of human capital to effectively create a society and economy based on, and driven by, the pursuit of knowledge, a society that connects to the past while linking to present. The key is management, which if effectively coupled with a strong will, can achieve prosperity and success.
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