Nawal El Saadawi Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

There is not a revolution that succe Women are suffering because they are being excluded. The high military council excluded women from the committee to change the constitution.

I practiced medicine up 'til now. I practice psychiatry. I shifted from different specialties. I started as a village doctor - community doctor, public health preventive medicine.

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.

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

Woman at Point Zero I wrote during the '70s in Arabic. It came in English in '82. So, almost ten years' difference between the Arabic and the English.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

In history, the millions win; that is democracy.

Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith.

Plastic surgery is a postmodern veil.

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

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

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.

First of all, all writing includes some part of the self. The relationship of the self and the other exists in writing, whether autobiographical or novel. There is a self and an other.

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.

All revolutions in history have obstacles.

I never stopped writing. I started writing when I was twelve years of age. And I was writing all the time. But nothing was translated until thirty years after I started writing, when The Hidden Face of Eve was translated in 1980.

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.

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.

First of all, I hated the medical profession. Medical education in Egypt was taken from the British, French, colonial educational system. And it's very, very lacking - there is no sexology. I never read the word clitoris in any medical book when I was educated.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women.

People like [Memoirs of a Woman Doctor], whether young people, young women, even critics - male critics - they were not shocked by it. Of course, some parts were cut.

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

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.

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

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.

Fearing servility, people become servile.

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.

We cannot be liberated as women in a society built on class oppression or gender oppression or religious oppression.

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.

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.

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

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.