Nawal El Saadawi Quotations

When we live in a world that is very unjust, you have to be a dissident.

Whenever I go to New York or any European country, they say: 'Nawal, why don't you get a facelift?' I tell them, 'I am proud of my wrinkles. Every wrinkle on my face tells the story of my life. Why should I hide my age?'

To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul, between science and art, between fiction and nonfiction.

When you are intelligent and beautiful you face a lot of problems. If you are beautiful and stupid then it's easy.

To me, 'beauty' means to be natural, creative, honest - to say the truth.

If you do not love yourself, well, you cannot do anything well, that's my philosophy.

When you have increasing power of religious groups, oppression of women increases. Women are oppressed in all religions.

I am very much against makeup and high heels and all that we inherit as 'beauty.'

The family code in Egypt is one of the worst family codes in the Arab world. Polygamy. The husband is having absolute power over the family.

Education should be totally secular. I am not telling people not to believe in God, but it should be a personal matter which should be done at home.

Unity is power; without unity women cannot fight for their rights anywhere.

The feminists who are aware of the effects of patriarchy realize that we are all in the same boat from the dangers of patriarchy, and that the oppression of women is universal.

Women in most countries have not achieved much, because they can't be liberated under the patriarchal, capitalist, imperialist and military system that determines the way we live now, and which is governed by power, not justice, by false democracy, not real freedom.

Home is where you are appreciated, safe and protected, creative, and where you are loved - not where you are put in prison.

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.

I've participated in many demonstrations since I was a child. When I was at medical college, I was fighting King Farouk, then British colonization, against Nasser, against Sadat who pushed me into prison, Mubarak who pushed me into exile. I never stopped.

In history, the millions win; that is democracy.

A lot of women are afraid of loneliness, so when they see a woman who can live alone, then they think, 'Hmm, I can do that.' But you need an example, and that is why I am proud to say I have divorced three husbands.

I don't think that people in power can be convinced by words or articles. They will never give it up by choice.

I am becoming more radical with age. I have noticed that writers, when they are old, become milder. But for me it is the opposite. Age makes me more angry.

You know, I look to myself mainly as a creative writer all my life and a medical doctor.

Home to me is the world because my books have been translated into more than 30 languages. People feel they know me and the minute they talk about my life or books I feel at home. Home is where you are appreciated, safe and protected, creative, and where you are loved – not where you are put in prison.

My three husbands were afraid of me. I am a very powerful woman.

War criminals in the U.S. and Israel are not punished: no international court has the courage to put them on trial.

We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism.

The slogan of the revolution was dignity, social justice, and freedom. You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women.

The Salafists are trying to abort the revolution and make it religious, though the revolution started secular. There was not a single Islamic slogan. It was secular men and women, and in fact, they were unified. Now they want to divide the revolution, and religion is a very strong weapon.

All revolutions in history have obstacles. There is not a revolution that succes.

Women were everywhere in the revolution. Women participated in it, and many women were killed. Then we had the right to speak up and gain some more rights, but what happened was there was a backlash. Why? Because we have the Salafists, Muslim Brothers, religious groups.

I've lived 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.

Love has made me a different person. It has made the world beautiful.

I knew I hated him as only a woman can hate a man, as only a slave can hate his master.

Thus, after a period of about two thousand years the greatest crime became to worship a god other than the God of Moses, whereas injustice became a minor sin. I began to ask myself how this change had come about. Was it linked to a new order in which the female goddesses had been replaced by one male god?

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.

Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith.

Truth is relative, and there is always something missing in truth that prevents it from being perfect.

The tracing of a child's lineage and its name with reference to the father, though it has lasted for many thousands of years, has not become any the more natural or reasonable as a result.

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.

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.

What we require is not a formal return to tradition and religion, but a rereading, a reinterpretation, of our history that can illuminate the present and pave the way to a better future. For example, if we delve more deeply into ancient Egyptian and African civilisations we will discover the humanistic elements that were prevalent in many areas of life. Women enjoyed a high status and rights, which they later lost when class patriarchal society became the prevalent social system.

We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism.

War criminals in the U.S. and Israel are not punished: no international court has the courage to put them on trial.

Fearing servility, people become servile.

Plastic surgery is a postmodern veil.

We see our homeland more clearly when we are away from it than when we are in it.

My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite is deadly.

Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.

Something I tried to hold onto, to touch if only for a moment, but it slipped away from me like the air, like an illusion, or a dream that floats away and is lost. I wept in my sleep as though it was something I was losing now; a loss I was experiencing for the first time, and not something I had lost a long time ago.

Memory is never complete. There are always parts of it that time has amputated. Writing is a way of retrieving them, of bringing the missing parts back to it, of making it more holistic.

Many people come here and they think my apartment is a poor relative to my name. But you cannot be radical and have money, it’s impossible.

But I feel that you, in particular, are a person who cannot live without love." "Yet I am living without love." "Then you are either living a lie or not living at all.

They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.” I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.

Language, journalism, food, sex. All is politics. Even innocent love stories are politics. ... There is no such thing as neutrality.

The trilogy composed of politics, religion and sex is the most sensitive of all issues in any society.

I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one.

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.

Prostitution means sexual intercourse between a man and a woman aimed at satisfying the man's sexual and the woman's economic needs. It is obvious that sexual needs, even in a male dominated system, are not as urgent and important as economic needs which, if not satisfied, lead to disease and death. Yet society considers the woman's economic need as less vital than the man's sexual one.

I have triumphed over both life and death because I no longer desire to live, nor do I any longer fear to die.

Words should not seek to please, to hide the wounds in our bodies, or the shameful moments in our lives. They may hurt, give us pain, but they can also provoke us to question what we have accepted for thousands of years.

Man ... put himself in a tight corner when he decided that woman was innately passive.

Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.

Here the oppression of women is very subtle. If we take female circumcision, the excision of the clitoris, it is done physically in Egypt. But here it is done psychologically and by education. So even if women have the clitoris, the clitoris was banned; it was removed by Freudian theory and by the mainstream culture.

We never know the reality of things: we see only what we are aware of. It is our consciousness that determines the shape of the world around us -- its size, motion and meaning.

Who said to kill does not require gentleness?

You poor, deluded woman...do you believe there is any such thing as love?...You're living an illusion. Do you believe the words of love they whisper in the ears of penniless women like us?

Interviewer: What would you say to a woman in this country who assumes she is no longer oppressed, who believes women's liberation has been achieved? el Saadawi: Well I would think she is blind. Like many people who are blind to gender problems, to class problems, to international problems. She's blind to what's happening to her.

There is not a revolution that succeeded in a few months. It takes years, even decades, to fulfill its goals. I am very hopeful because I trust the revolution and feel nobody can really conquer a nation that has decided to be united and to fight, and we decided to fight. The revolution is there, inside the Egyptians by the millions.

When my second husband shouted, 'Me or your writing!' I replied, 'My writing.' We separated.

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.

Everybody has to die, Firdaus. I will die, and you will die. The important thing is how to live until you die.

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.

There is a proverb that says, ‘Talk so that I may know who you are.’ But I say, ‘Show me your eyes and I will know who you are.

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.

To have arrived at the truth means that one no longer fears death. For death and truth are similar in that they both require a great courage if one wishes to face them.

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.

Danger has been a part of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote. Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.

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.

If you are creative, you must be dissident.

Women are half the society. You cannot have a revolution without women. You cannot have democracy without women. You cannot have equality without women. You can't have anything without women.

She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it.