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You poor, deluded woman...do you believe there is any such thing as love?...You're living an illusion. Do you believe the words of love they whisper in the ears of penniless women like us?

Nawal El Saadawi

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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
Words
Woman
Living
Penniless
Women
Deluded
Thing
Whisper
Believe
Illusion
Love
Ears
Like
Poor

More quotes by Nawal El Saadawi

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I've lived here [in Egypt] among Christians and Muslims, and we never had a conflict. Now you have a conflict between Christians and Muslims and Baha'is and Sunni and Shia. The Salafists are trying to abort the revolution and make it religious, though the revolution started secular.
Nawal El Saadawi
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Words should not seek to please, to hide the wounds in our bodies, or the shameful moments in our lives. They may hurt, give us pain, but they can also provoke us to question what we have accepted for thousands of years.
Nawal El Saadawi
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Women were everywhere in the revolution. Women participated in it, and many women were killed. Then we had the right to speak up and gain some more rights, but what happened was there was a backlash. Why? Because we have the Salafists, Muslim Brothers, religious groups.
Nawal El Saadawi
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They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.” I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.
Nawal El Saadawi
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You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women.
Nawal El Saadawi
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Language, journalism, food, sex. All is politics. Even innocent love stories are politics. ... There is no such thing as neutrality.
Nawal El Saadawi
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The feminists who are aware of the effects of patriarchy realize that we are all in the same boat from the dangers of patriarchy, and that the oppression of women is universal.
Nawal El Saadawi
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Who said to kill does not require gentleness?
Nawal El Saadawi
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In history, the millions win that is democracy.
Nawal El Saadawi
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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
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To me, 'beauty' means to be natural, creative, honest - to say the truth.
Nawal El Saadawi
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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
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The Salafists are trying to abort the revolution and make it religious, though the revolution started secular. There was not a single Islamic slogan. It was secular men and women, and in fact, they were unified. Now they want to divide the revolution, and religion is a very strong weapon.
Nawal El Saadawi
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The parts in which I elaborated on the sexual life of the doctor herself, the personal life, her relation with men [in Memoirs of a Woman Doctor]. All this. They left only some very, very minute parts. And also the political, the political element in it. So in a way, they cut pieces that to my mind were very important.
Nawal El Saadawi
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I practiced medicine up 'til now. I practice psychiatry. I shifted from different specialties. I started as a village doctor - community doctor, public health preventive medicine.
Nawal El Saadawi
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I've lived in Egypt among Christians and Muslims, and we never had a conflict. Now you have a conflict between Christians and Muslims and Baha'is and Sunni and Shia.
Nawal El Saadawi
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Unity is power without unity women cannot fight for their rights anywhere.
Nawal El Saadawi
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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
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Truth is relative, and there is always something missing in truth that prevents it from being perfect.
Nawal El Saadawi
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Danger has been a part of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote. Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.
Nawal El Saadawi