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

More quotes by 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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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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All revolutions in history have obstacles. There is not a revolution that succes.
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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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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She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it.
Nawal El Saadawi
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I am becoming more radical with age. I have noticed that writers, when they are old, become milder. But for me it is the opposite. Age makes me more angry.
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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If you are creative, you must be dissident.
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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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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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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Love has made me a different person. It has made the world beautiful.
Nawal El Saadawi
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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
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My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite is deadly.
Nawal El Saadawi
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Home to me is the world because my books have been translated into more than 30 languages.
Nawal El Saadawi
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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
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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
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You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women.
Nawal El Saadawi