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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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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
Body
Question
Provoking
May
Hurt
Hide
Giving
Words
Wounds
Years
Pain
Thousands
Lives
Bodies
Moments
Accepted
Also
Seek
Provoke
Give
Please
Shameful

More quotes by 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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Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith.
Nawal El Saadawi
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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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What makes revolutionary thought unique is its clarity and dignity, and its clear grasp of freedom and justice: simple, clear words that are understood without the need for any help from elite writers or thinkers.
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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In history, the millions win that is democracy.
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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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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Who said to kill does not require gentleness?
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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First of all, I hated the medical profession. Medical education in Egypt was taken from the British, French, colonial educational system. And it's very, very lacking - there is no sexology. I never read the word clitoris in any medical book when I was educated.
Nawal El Saadawi
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Man ... put himself in a tight corner when he decided that woman was innately passive.
Nawal El Saadawi
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We see our homeland more clearly when we are away from it than when we are in it.
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 tracing of a child's lineage and its name with reference to the father, though it has lasted for many thousands of years, has not become any the more natural or reasonable as a result.
Nawal El Saadawi
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She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it.
Nawal El Saadawi
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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
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All revolutions in history have obstacles. There is not a revolution that succes.
Nawal El Saadawi
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I had to educate myself about female circumcision, about the clitoris, about sexology. We studied gynecology only. Pregnancy, maternal care, etc.
Nawal El Saadawi
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My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite is deadly.
Nawal El Saadawi