Quote

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.

Nawal El Saadawi

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Nawal El Saadawi
Age: 89 †
Born: 1931
Born: October 27
Died: 2021
Died: March 21
Feminist
Gynaecologist
Novelist
Physician
Physician Writer
Politician
Psychiatrist
Writer
Nawal el-Saadaoui
Nawal al Sadaawi
Nawal Saadawi
Nawal as-Saadawi
Nawäl as-Saʿdāwi
Men
Single
Bring
Hand
Face
Faces
Smashing
Desire
Lift
Hands
Lifts
Every
Filled

More quotes by Nawal El Saadawi

Image
I had to educate myself about female circumcision, about the clitoris, about sexology. We studied gynecology only. Pregnancy, maternal care, etc.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
Language, journalism, food, sex. All is politics. Even innocent love stories are politics. ... There is no such thing as neutrality.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
You know, I look to myself mainly as a creative writer all my life and a medical doctor.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
When you are intelligent and beautiful you face a lot of problems. If you are beautiful and stupid then it's easy.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
We never know the reality of things: we see only what we are aware of. It is our consciousness that determines the shape of the world around us -- its size, motion and meaning.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
Truth is relative, and there is always something missing in truth that prevents it from being perfect.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
In history, the millions win that is democracy.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
When I am in Egypt, I am phoned because I am listed in the medical directory under Mental Health and Psychiatry. And of course, I see very few people, because I give much more time to writing. So I cannot say that I really stopped medicine, but I practice medicine - or psychiatry - in a very different way. In an artistic way!
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite is deadly.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
Who said to kill does not require gentleness?
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
There is not a revolution that succe Saudi Arabia paid $7 billion for the Salafists to come, and the United States and Israel are pouring a lot of money into Egypt. Why? To divide the country by religion.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
Man ... put himself in a tight corner when he decided that woman was innately passive.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
War criminals in the U.S. and Israel are not punished: no international court has the courage to put them on trial.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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.
Nawal El Saadawi