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[9/11] was not meant to be argued with. It wasn't part of any negotiation. No message was intended with it. It spoke for itself, which is unusual.

Edward Said

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Edward Said
Age: 68 †
Born: 1935
Born: November 1
Died: 2003
Died: November 25
Journalist
Literary Critic
Musicologist
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Professor
Writer
Jerusalem
Middle East
Edward Wadie Said
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Spokes
Spoke
Intended
Unusual
Message
Messages
Meant
Argued
Wasn
Negotiation

More quotes by Edward Said

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We can not fight for our rights and our history as well as future until we are armed with weapons of criticism and dedicated consciousness.
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What we must eliminate are systems of representation that carry with them the authority which has become repressive because it doesn't permit or make room for interventions on the part of those represented.
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Refuse to allow yourself to become a vegetable that simply absorbs information, pre-packaged, pre-ideologized , because no message.. is anything but an ideological package that has gone through a kind of processing.
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To say that we're going to end countries or eradicate terrorism, and that it's a long war over many years, with many different instruments, suggests a much more complex and drawn-out conflict for which, I think, most Americans aren't prepared.
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These actions were taken with the support and financing of the United States. How can you say this is part of U.S. adherence to international law and U.N. resolutions? The result is a kind of schizophrenic picture of the United States.
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If you live in the [Middle East] area, you see [U.S actions] as part of a continuing drive for dominance, and with it a kind of obduracy, a stubborn opposition to the wishes and desires and aspirations of the people there.
Edward Said
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I emphasize in it [my Orientalism] accortdingly that neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other.
Edward Said
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Most Arabs and Muslims feel that the United States hasn't really been paying much attention to their desires. They think it has been pursuing its policies for its own sake and not according to many of the principles that it claims are its own - democracy, self-determination, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, international law.
Edward Said
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Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings.
Edward Said
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Power, after all, is not just military strength. It is the social power that comes from democracy, the cultural power that comes from freedom of expression and research, the personal power that entitles every Arab citizen to feel that he or she is in fact a citizen, and not just a sheep in some great shepherd's flock.
Edward Said
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Ironically, many of these people, including Osama bin Laden and the mujahedeen, were, in fact, nourished by the United States in the early eighties in its efforts to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
Edward Said
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We are at a point in our work when we can no longer ignore empires and the imperial context in our studies. (p. 5)
Edward Said
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Much as I have no wish to hurt anyone's feelings, my first obligation has not been to be nice but to be true to my perhaps peculiar memories, experiences and feelings.
Edward Said
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In the Islamic world, the U.S. is seen in two quite different ways. One view recognizes what an extraordinary country the U.S. is.
Edward Said
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Speaking as a New Yorker, I found it a shocking and terrifying event [9/11], particularly the scale of it. At bottom, it was an implacable desire to do harm to innocent people. It was aimed at symbols: the World Trade Center, the heart of American capitalism, and the Pentagon, the headquarters of the American military establishment.
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...it is sensible to begin by asking the beginning questions, why imagine power in the first place, and what is the relationship between one's motive for imagining power and the image one ends up with.
Edward Said
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The United States that has been involved first in the Gulf War and then in the tremendously damaging sanctions against Iraqi civilians. The United States that is the supporter of Israel against the Palestinians.
Edward Said
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[One task of intellectuals is] to break down the stereotypes and reductive categories that are . . . limiting to human thought and communication.
Edward Said
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They [root causes of terror] come out of a long dialectic of U.S. involvement in the affairs of the Islamic world, the oil-producing world, the Arab world, the Middle East - those areas that are considered to be essential to U.S. interests and security.
Edward Said
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It was thought that to rally Islam against godless communism would be doing the Soviet Union a very bad turn indeed, and that, in fact, transpired.
Edward Said