Nawal El Saadawi Quotes
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Women are suffering because they are being excluded. The high military council excluded women from the committee to change the constitution [of Egypt]. We cannot be liberated as women in a society built on class oppression or gender oppression or religious oppression.
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Motherhood goes back in history to a time when a father had no way of knowing his children. Fatherhood only became known when class patriarchal society had established itself and imposed monogamous marriage on women. Motherhood is like sun and rain and plants, a quality and product of nature which does not require laws or systems in order to exist.
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All the men I did get to know, every single man of them, has filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face.
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All revolutions in history have obstacles.
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During the '80s I wrote Memoirs from the Women's Prison. This is one of my most important books. It came out in Arabic in '83. About my experience in prison.
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There is not a revolution that succe Women were everywhere in the revolution. Women participated in it, and many women were killed.
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When we live in a world that is very unjust, you have to be a dissident.
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What makes revolutionary thought unique is its clarity and dignity, and its clear grasp of freedom and justice: simple, clear words that are understood without the need for any help from elite writers or thinkers.
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Revolutionary men with principles were not really different from the rest. They used their cleverness to get, in return for principles, what other men buy with their money.
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They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.” I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.
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Democracy is not just freedom to criticize the government or head of state, or to hold parliamentary elections. True democracy obtains only when the people - women, men, young people, children - have the ability to change the system of industrial capitalism that has oppressed them since the earliest days of slavery: a system based on class division, patriarchy, and military might, a hierarchical system that subjugates people merely because they are born poor, or female, or dark-skinned.
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My three husbands were afraid of me. I am a very powerful woman.
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If you are creative, you must be dissident.
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Who said to kill does not require gentleness?
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We cannot be liberated as women in a society built on class oppression or gender oppression or religious oppression.
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The parts in which I elaborated on the sexual life of the doctor herself, the personal life, her relation with men [in Memoirs of a Woman Doctor]. All this. They left only some very, very minute parts. And also the political, the political element in it. So in a way, they cut pieces that to my mind were very important.
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Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith.
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Yet not for a single moment did I have any doubts about my own integrity and honour as a woman. I knew that my profession had been invented by men, and that men were in control of both our worlds, the one on earth, and the one in heaven. That men force women to sell their bodies at a price, and that the lowest paid body is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another.
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Language, journalism, food, sex. All is politics. Even innocent love stories are politics. ... There is no such thing as neutrality.
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moral codes and standards in our societies very rarely apply to all people equally. This is the most damning proof of how immoral such codes and standards really are.
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Everybody has to die, Firdaus. I will die, and you will die. The important thing is how to live until you die.
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Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.
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Solidarity between women can be a powerful force of change, and can influence future development in ways favourable not only to women but also to men.
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The medical profession [in Egypt] is also very commercial. Health is not given to the poor. You know, if you have money, you have medical care; if you do not, then you are in trouble. I was not ready at all to build my economic security on the diseases of people, on suffering, especially of women and children. So, in a way, I rebelled against it.
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To me, 'beauty' means to be natural, creative, honest - to say the truth.
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I've lived here [in Egypt] among Christians and Muslims, and we never had a conflict. Now you have a conflict between Christians and Muslims and Baha'is and Sunni and Shia. The Salafists are trying to abort the revolution and make it religious, though the revolution started secular.
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The slogan of the revolution was dignity, social justice, and freedom. You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women.
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War criminals in the U.S. and Israel are not punished: no international court has the courage to put them on trial.
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Men impose deception on women and punish them for being deceived, force them down to the lowest level and punish them for falling so low, bind them in marriage and then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows.
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Plastic surgery is a postmodern veil.
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