Quote

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

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

More quotes by Nawal El Saadawi

Image
Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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
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
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
Image
Man ... put himself in a tight corner when he decided that woman was innately passive.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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
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
You know, I look to myself mainly as a creative writer all my life and a medical doctor.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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
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
During the '80s I wrote Memoirs from the Women's Prison. This is one of my most important books. It came out in Arabic in '83. About my experience in prison.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
Home to me is the world because my books have been translated into more than 30 languages.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.” I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.
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
Truth is relative, and there is always something missing in truth that prevents it from being perfect.
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
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
If you do not love yourself, well, you cannot do anything well, that's my philosophy.
Nawal El Saadawi
Image
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