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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

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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
Attack
Society
Individual
Right
Believe
Disagrees
Disagree
Defend

More quotes by Naguib Mahfouz

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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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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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The Nobel Prize has given me, for the first time in my life, the feeling that my literature could be appreciated on an international level.
Naguib Mahfouz
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I've never worked in politics, never been a member of an official committee or a political party.
Naguib Mahfouz
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The writer interweaves a story with his own doubts, questions, and values. That is art.
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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I consider Khomeini's position dangerous. He does not have the right to pass judgment-that is not the Islamic way.
Naguib Mahfouz
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History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
Naguib Mahfouz
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Home is not where you were born home is where all your attempts to escape cease.
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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We are passing through a very sensitive time, and on the whole, this country is facing very big 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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As for life's tragedies, our love will defeat them. Love is the most effective cure. In the crevices of disasters, happiness lies like a diamond in a mind, so let us instill in ourselves the wisdom of love.
Naguib Mahfouz
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If the urge to write should ever leave me, I want that day to be my last.
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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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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One effect that the Nobel Prize seems to have had is that more Arabic literary works have been translated into other languages.
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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The criminal is trying to solve his immediate problems.
Naguib Mahfouz
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Only the poor are handicapped by honor.
Naguib Mahfouz