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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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Egypt has suffered more ordeals than the other countries to get where it is.
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This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.
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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.
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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.
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Poetry is a form of mathematics, a highly rigorous relationship with words.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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At 21, I discovered repression and injustice. The army would shoot students with real bullets.
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In the Arab world, there is no link between the cultural habits of peoples and the ways of thinking and creating of modern intellectuals. They are two separate worlds.
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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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I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.
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.
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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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Beauty is first and foremost an emotion.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
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Most of those who died did not die of hunger but of hatred. Feeling hatred diminishes you. It eats at your from within and attacks the immune system. When you have hatred inside you, it always crushes you in the end.
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