Nawal El Saadawi Quotes

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.

Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith.

I hope for nothing
I want for nothing
I fear nothing
I am free.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Everybody has to die. I prefer to die for a crime I have committed rather than to die for one of the crimes which you have committed.

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.

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

Ever since I was a child I used to hear my father say: 'If the price we pay for freedom is high, we pay a much higher price if we accept to be slaves.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

Writing: such has been my crime ever since I was a small child. To this day writing remains my crime. Now, although I am out of prison, I continue to live inside a prison of another sort, one without steel bars. For the technology of oppression and might without justice has become more advanced, and the fetters imposed on mind and body have become invisible. The most dangerous shackles are the invisible ones, because they deceive people into believing they are free. This delusion is the new prison that people inhabit today, north and south, east and west...We inhabit the age of the technology of false consciousness, the technology of hiding truths behind amiable humanistic slogans that may change from one era to another...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.

The mask of secularism may differ in thickness, may be less visible, but religion is always there hidden under hallowed big beautiful words

I wanted a perfect man like the one in my imagination and a perfect love and I wasn't going to abandon either of these goals, however long it meant I had to be alone. 'All or nothing' was my abiding principle and I'd never accept half measures.

How is it possible to live? Life is so hard?'
'You must be harder than life, Firdaus. Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.'
'But you are not hard, Sharifa, so how do you manage to live?'
'I am hard, terribly hard, Firdaus.'
'No, you are gentle and soft.'
'My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite deadly.'
'Like snake?'
'Yes, exactly like a snake. Life is a snake. They are the same, Firdaus. If the snake realises you are not a snake, it will bite you. And if life knows you have no sting, it will devour you.

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.

Plastic surgery is a postmodern veil.

I knew that successful politicians cannot bear to accept defeat within themselves. A human being cannot stand up to a double defeat. That is the secret of their continuous attempt to rise to power. They draw a feeling of supremacy from their power over others. It makes them feel victorious rather than defeated. It hides how essentially hollow they are inside, despite the impression of greatness they try to spread around them, which is all they really care for.

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.

My work is not worthy of respect. Why then do you join in it with me?

If you are creative you must be dissident.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

My father was no different from a king except for one thing."

"And what was that?"

"He never taught me to kill. He left me to learn it alone as I went through life."

"Did life teach you to kill?"

"Of course it did."

"And have you killed anybody yet?"

"Yes, I have."

He stared at me for a brief moment, laughed and then said, "I can't believe that someone like you can kill."

"Why not?"

"Because you are too gentle."

"And who said to kill does not require gentleness?"

He looked into my eyes again, laughed, and said, "I cannot believe that you are capable of killing anything, even a mosquito."

"I might not kill a mosquito, but I can kill a man.

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.

Now i had learnt that honor required large sums of money to protect it, but that large sums of money could not be obtained without losing one's honor. An infernal circle whirling round and round, draggng me up and down with it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fearing servility, people become servile.

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

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?

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

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.

I am speaking the truth now without any difficulty. For the truth is always easy and simple. And in its simplicity lies a savage power. I only arrived at the savage, primitive truths of life after years of struggle. For it is only very rarely that people can arrive at the simple, but awesome and powerful truths of life after only a few years. And 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. And truth is like death in that it kills. When I killed I did it with truth not with a knife. That is why they are afraid and in a hurry to execute me. They do not fear my knife. It is my truth which frightens them. This fearful truth gives me great strength. It protects me from fearing death, or life, or hunger, or nakedness, or destruction. It is this fearful truth which prevents me from fearing the brutality of rulers and policemen. I spit with ease on their lying faces and words, on their lying newspapers.

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

Home to me is the world because my books have been translated into more than 30 languages.