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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
Defend
Attack
Society
Individual
Right
Believe
Disagrees
Disagree

More quotes by 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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I believe in life and in people. I feel obliged to advocate their highest ideals as long as I believe them to be true. I also see myself compelled to revolt against ideals I believe to be false, since recoiling from rebellion would be a form of treason
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Visit me once each year, for it's wrong to abandon people forever.
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The real malady is fear of life, not of death
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Madness is the acme of intelligence.
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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.
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Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.
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As the tension eases, we must look in the direction of agriculture, industry and education as our final goals, and toward democracy under Mr Mubarak.
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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.
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In the calculus of good deeds you have the most to gain.
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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.
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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.
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The writer interweaves a story with his own doubts, questions, and values. That is art.
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The criminal is trying to solve his immediate problems.
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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.
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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.
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Insults are the business of the court.
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Home is not where you were born home is where all your attempts to escape cease.
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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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Winning Nobel imposed on me a lifestyle to which I am not used and which I would not have preferred.
Naguib Mahfouz