Nawal El Saadawi Quotes & Sayings

To me, 'beauty' means to be natural, creative, honest - to say the truth. — Nawal El Saadawi

In history, the millions win; that is democracy. — Nawal El Saadawi

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

Here the oppression of women is very subtle. If we take female circumcision, the excision of the clitoris, it is done physically in Egypt. But here it is done psychologically and by education. So even if women have the clitoris, the clitoris was banned; it was removed by Freudian theory and by the mainstream culture. — Nawal El Saadawi

Interviewer: What would you say to a woman in this country who assumes she is no longer oppressed, who believes women's liberation has been achieved?
el Saadawi: Well I would think she is blind. Like many people who are blind to gender problems, to class problems, to international problems. She's blind to what's happening to her. — Nawal El Saadawi

To have arrived at the truth means that one no longer fears death. For death and truth are similar in that they both require a great courage if one wishes to face them. — Nawal El Saadawi

She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it. — Nawal El Saadawi

Badreya whispered in her ear, The price of freedom is high, Bodour, and there is no writing without freedom. Break your chains, Bodour, break free of your prison and reach out for the forbidden tree. If you eat from it, you will not die, for knowledge leads you to life and not to death. You will live forever. — Nawal El Saadawi

Truth is relative, and there is always something missing in truth that prevents it from being perfect. — Nawal El Saadawi

I am very much against makeup and high heels and all that we inherit as 'beauty.' — Nawal El Saadawi

Many people come here and they think my apartment is a poor relative to my name. But you cannot be radical and have money, it's impossible. — Nawal El Saadawi

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

All revolutions in history have obstacles. There is not a revolution that succes. — Nawal El Saadawi

Thus, after a period of about two thousand years the greatest crime became to worship a god other than the God of Moses, whereas injustice became a minor sin. I began to ask myself how this change had come about. Was it linked to a new order in which the female goddesses had been replaced by one male god? — Nawal El Saadawi

Everybody has to die, Firdaus. I will die, and you will die. The important thing is how to live until you die. — Nawal El Saadawi

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

Who said to kill does not require gentleness? — Nawal El Saadawi

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

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

I don't think that people in power can be convinced by words or articles. They will never give it up by choice. — Nawal El Saadawi

Ever since I was a child I used to hear my father say: 'If the price we pay for freedom is high, we pay a much higher price if we accept to be slaves. — Nawal El Saadawi

How is it possible to live? Life is so hard?'
'You must be harder than life, Firdaus. Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.'
'But you are not hard, Sharifa, so how do you manage to live?'
'I am hard, terribly hard, Firdaus.'
'No, you are gentle and soft.'
'My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite deadly.'
'Like snake?'
'Yes, exactly like a snake. Life is a snake. They are the same, Firdaus. If the snake realises you are not a snake, it will bite you. And if life knows you have no sting, it will devour you. — Nawal El Saadawi

You know, I look to myself mainly as a creative writer all my life and a medical doctor. — Nawal El Saadawi

My work is not worthy of respect. Why then do you join in it with me? — Nawal El Saadawi

Man ... put himself in a tight corner when he decided that woman was innately passive. — Nawal El Saadawi

My three husbands were afraid of me. I am a very powerful woman. — Nawal El Saadawi

The mask of secularism may differ in thickness, may be less visible, but religion is always there hidden under hallowed big beautiful words — Nawal El Saadawi

What we require is not a formal return to tradition and religion, but a rereading, a reinterpretation, of our history that can illuminate the present and pave the way to a better future. For example, if we delve more deeply into ancient Egyptian and African civilisations we will discover the humanistic elements that were prevalent in many areas of life. Women enjoyed a high status and rights, which they later lost when class patriarchal society became the prevalent social system. — Nawal El Saadawi

I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one. — Nawal El Saadawi

Language, journalism, food, sex. All is politics. Even innocent love stories are politics ... There is no such thing as neutrality. — Nawal El Saadawi

The slogan of the revolution was dignity, social justice, and freedom. You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women. — Nawal El Saadawi

Education should be totally secular. I am not telling people not to believe in God, but it should be a personal matter which should be done at home. — Nawal El Saadawi

Revolutionary men with principles were not really different from the rest. They used their cleverness to get, in return for principles, what other men buy with their money. — Nawal El Saadawi

The Salafists are trying to abort the revolution and make it religious, though the revolution started secular. There was not a single Islamic slogan. It was secular men and women, and in fact, they were unified. Now they want to divide the revolution, and religion is a very strong weapon. — Nawal El Saadawi

Women are half the society. You cannot have a revolution without women. You cannot have democracy without women. You cannot have equality without women. You can't have anything without women. — Nawal El Saadawi

My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite is deadly. — Nawal El Saadawi

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

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

Unity is power; without unity women cannot fight for their rights anywhere. — Nawal El Saadawi

If you are creative you must be dissident. — Nawal El Saadawi

How many were the years of my life that went by before my body, and my self became really mine, to do with them as I wished? How many were the years of my life that were lost before I tore my body and my self away from the people who held me in their grasp since the very first day? — Nawal El Saadawi

To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul, between science and art, between fiction and nonfiction. — Nawal El Saadawi

A lot of women are afraid of loneliness, so when they see a woman who can live alone, then they think, 'Hmm, I can do that.' But you need an example, and that is why I am proud to say I have divorced three husbands. — Nawal El Saadawi

My heart faltered, overcome by its frightened, almost frenzied beating because of something I had just lost, or was on the point of losing for ever. My fingers grasped at his hand with such violence that no force in the world, no matter how great, could take it away from me. — Nawal El Saadawi

We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism. — Nawal El Saadawi

God was just and that the head of the state in Egypt wielded his power fairly. If God deprived a child of family or wealth, He might bless him with intelligence, music, or the love of God and the homeland. A poor person might still be morally rich. — Nawal El Saadawi

Home to me is the world because my books have been translated into more than 30 languages. — Nawal El Saadawi

Now i had learnt that honor required large sums of money to protect it, but that large sums of money could not be obtained without losing one's honor. An infernal circle whirling round and round, draggng me up and down with it. — Nawal El Saadawi

Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself. — Nawal El Saadawi

Throughout the thirty years of our life together the authorities have given us no respite. They were after us all the time. If we published a magazine, they closed it down. If we started a project they prevented us from carrying it through. If we established an association they told us we were breaking the laws and banned its activities. Now they were driving us out of the country. — Nawal El Saadawi

Plastic surgery is a postmodern veil. — Nawal El Saadawi

When my second husband shouted, 'Me or your writing!' I replied, 'My writing.' We separated. — Nawal El Saadawi

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

When you have increasing power of religious groups, oppression of women increases. Women are oppressed in all religions. — Nawal El Saadawi

Love has made me a different person. It has made the world beautiful. — Nawal El Saadawi

They said, "You are a savage and dangerous woman."
I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous. — Nawal El Saadawi

The trilogy composed of politics, religion and sex is the most sensitive of all issues in any society. — Nawal El Saadawi

Motherhood goes back in history to a time when a father had no way of knowing his children. Fatherhood only became known when class patriarchal society had established itself and imposed monogamous marriage on women. Motherhood is like sun and rain and plants, a quality and product of nature which does not require laws or systems in order to exist. — Nawal El Saadawi

Moral codes and standards in our societies very rarely apply to all people equally. This is the most damning proof of how immoral such codes and standards really are. — Nawal El Saadawi

Women in most countries have not achieved much, because they can't be liberated under the patriarchal, capitalist, imperialist and military system that determines the way we live now, and which is governed by power, not justice, by false democracy, not real freedom. — Nawal El Saadawi

I've participated in many demonstrations since I was a child. When I was at medical college, I was fighting King Farouk, then British colonization, against Nasser, against Sadat who pushed me into prison, Mubarak who pushed me into exile. I never stopped. — Nawal El Saadawi

If you do not love yourself, well, you cannot do anything well, that's my philosophy. — Nawal El Saadawi

When we live in a world that is very unjust, you have to be a dissident. — Nawal El Saadawi

She replied that it was precisely men well versed in religion who beat their wives. The precepts of religion permitted such punishment. A virtuous woman was not supposed to complain about her husband. Her duty was perfect obedience. — Nawal El Saadawi

There is not a revolution that succeeded in a few months. It takes years, even decades, to fulfill its goals. I am very hopeful because I trust the revolution and feel nobody can really conquer a nation that has decided to be united and to fight, and we decided to fight. The revolution is there, inside the Egyptians by the millions. — Nawal El Saadawi

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

I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex and unlimited power. They were men who sowed corruption on the earth, and plundered their peoples, men endowed with loud voices, a capacity for persuasion, for choosing sweet words and shooting poisoned arrows. Thus, the truth about them was revealed only after their death, and as a result I discovered that history tended to repeat itself with a foolish obstinacy. — Nawal El Saadawi

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

There is a proverb that says, 'Talk so that I may know who you are.' But I say, 'Show me your eyes and I will know who you are. — Nawal El Saadawi

My father was no different from a king except for one thing."

"And what was that?"

"He never taught me to kill. He left me to learn it alone as I went through life."

"Did life teach you to kill?"

"Of course it did."

"And have you killed anybody yet?"

"Yes, I have."

He stared at me for a brief moment, laughed and then said, "I can't believe that someone like you can kill."

"Why not?"

"Because you are too gentle."

"And who said to kill does not require gentleness?"

He looked into my eyes again, laughed, and said, "I cannot believe that you are capable of killing anything, even a mosquito."

"I might not kill a mosquito, but I can kill a man. — Nawal El Saadawi

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

I knew I hated him as only a woman can hate a man, as only a slave can hate his master. — Nawal El Saadawi

Prostitution means sexual intercourse between a man and a woman aimed at satisfying the man's sexual and the woman's economic needs. It is obvious that sexual needs, even in a male dominated system, are not as urgent and important as economic needs which, if not satisfied, lead to disease and death. Yet society considers the woman's economic need as less vital than the man's sexual one. — Nawal El Saadawi

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

Whenever I go to New York or any European country, they say: 'Nawal, why don't you get a facelift?' I tell them, 'I am proud of my wrinkles. Every wrinkle on my face tells the story of my life. Why should I hide my age?' — Nawal El Saadawi

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

All the men I did get to know, every single man of them, has filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face. — Nawal El Saadawi

Women are suffering because they are being excluded. The high military council excluded women from the committee to change the constitution [of Egypt]. We cannot be liberated as women in a society built on class oppression or gender oppression or religious oppression. — Nawal El Saadawi

I have triumphed over both life and death because I no longer desire to live, nor do I any longer fear to die. — Nawal El Saadawi

Yet not for a single moment did I have any doubts about my own integrity and honour as a woman. I knew that my profession had been invented by men, and that men were in control of both our worlds, the one on earth, and the one in heaven. That men force women to sell their bodies at a price, and that the lowest paid body is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another. — Nawal El Saadawi

But I feel that you, in particular, are a person who cannot live without love." "Yet I am living without love." "Then you are either living a lie or not living at all. — Nawal El Saadawi

Fearing servility, people become servile. — Nawal El Saadawi

Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith. — Nawal El Saadawi

Solidarity between women can be a powerful force of change, and can influence future development in ways favourable not only to women but also to men. — Nawal El Saadawi

We see our homeland more clearly when we are away from it than when we are in it. — Nawal El Saadawi

Home is where you are appreciated, safe and protected, creative, and where you are loved - not where you are put in prison. — Nawal El Saadawi

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

Men impose deception on women and punish them for being deceived, force them down to the lowest level and punish them for falling so low, bind them in marriage and then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows. — Nawal El Saadawi

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