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We have no Arab intellectuals of international stature because we live in a state of generalized mediocrity. We are suspended in the pit without touching the bottom.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

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Tahar Ben Jelloun
Age: 76
Born: 1947
Born: December 1
Novelist
Poet
Psychotherapist
Writer
Fes
Morocco
International
Generalized
Bottom
Intellectuals
State
Stature
States
Suspended
Live
Pits
Without
Arab
Mediocrity
Touching

More quotes by Tahar Ben Jelloun

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Intellectuals try to keep going. But their situation is very difficult. Those who have had the courage to voice their opposition have often paid a very high price.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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Emigration is no longer a solution it's a defeat. People are risking death, drowning every day, but they're knocking on doors that are not open.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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Poetry is not only a set of words which are chosen to relate to each other it is something which goes much further than that to provide a glimpse of our vision of the world.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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New ideas should confront old ideas. We must refer to the example of Europe. People have fought to make Europe what it is today. Freedom is not something that is served up on a plate.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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It is impossible to disregard such an important medium as television. We should know how to use it, learn to work in it and express new values in it.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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We do not have many intellectuals who can speak out for us internationally. We have no writers who are recognized, respected and loved outside the Arab world.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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I don't feel guilty about expressing myself in French nor do I feel that I am continuing the work of the colonizers.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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I do not use the language of my people. I can take liberties with certain themes which the Arabic language would not allow me to take.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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I am a Moroccan writer of French expression.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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Our steps invent the path as we proceed behind us they leave no trace, only the void. So we shall always look ahead and trust our feet. They will take us as far as our minds will go... -- Tahar ben Jelloun
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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In Morocco, it's possible to see the Atlantic and the Mediterranean at the same time.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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At 21, I discovered repression and injustice. The army would shoot students with real bullets.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.
Tahar Ben Jelloun