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I defend both the freedom of expression and society's right to counter it. I must pay the price for differing. It is the natural way of things.

Naguib Mahfouz

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Naguib Mahfouz
Age: 94 †
Born: 1911
Born: December 11
Died: 2006
Died: August 30
Artist
Autobiographer
Film Writer
Intellectual
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Translator
Writer
Cairo
Egypt
Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha
Society
Freedom
Differing
Natural
Counter
Right
Defend
Must
Price
Way
Pay
Things
Expression
Literature

More quotes by Naguib Mahfouz

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The calendar has a magic that makes us imagine a memory can be resurrected and revived, but nothing returns.
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I am practically in the employ of Mr. Nobel. I have to meet everyone he sends my way.
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It is simply not part of my culture to preserve notes. I have never heard of a writer preserving his early drafts.
Naguib Mahfouz
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You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
Naguib Mahfouz
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When will the state of the country be sound?... When its people believe that the end result of cowardice is more disastrous than that of behaving with integrity.
Naguib Mahfouz
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Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life.
Naguib Mahfouz
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If the urge to write should ever leave me, I want that day to be my last.
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It's clearly more important to treat one's fellow man well than to be always praying and fasting and touching one's head to a prayer mat.
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The writer interweaves a story with his own doubts, questions, and values. That is art.
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My countrymen have the right to shake my hand and talk to me if they so wish. Don't forget that their support and their reading of my works is what brought me the Nobel prize.
Naguib Mahfouz
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Hosni Mubarak... his constitution is not democratic, but he is democratic. We can voice our opinions now. The press is free.
Naguib Mahfouz
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In the calculus of good deeds you have the most to gain.
Naguib Mahfouz
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You know what I'm afraid of? That God is sick of us.
Naguib Mahfouz
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Winning Nobel imposed on me a lifestyle to which I am not used and which I would not have preferred.
Naguib Mahfouz
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I am the son of two civilizations that at a certain age in history have formed a happy marriage. The first of these, seven thousand years old, is the Pharaonic civilization the second, one thousand four hundred years old, is the Islamic civilization.
Naguib Mahfouz
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The criminal is trying to solve his immediate problems.
Naguib Mahfouz
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Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.
Naguib Mahfouz
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Writing is for men who can think and feel, not mindless sensation seekers out of nightclubs and bars. But these are bad times. We are condemned to work with upstarts, clowns who no doubt got their training in a circus and then turned to journalism as the appropriate place to display their tricks.
Naguib Mahfouz
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We are like a woman with a difficult pregnancy. We have to rebuild the social classes in Egypt, and we must change the way things were.
Naguib Mahfouz
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I believe society has a right to defend itself, just as the individual has the right to attack that with which he disagrees.
Naguib Mahfouz