Nawal El Saadawi
Nawal El Saadawi
Nawal El Saadawiis an Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician and psychiatrist. She has written many books on the subject of women in Islam, paying particular attention to the practice of female genital mutilation in her society. She has been described as "the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab World"...
NationalityEgyptian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth27 October 1931
CountryEgypt
Nawal El Saadawi quotes about
democracy revolution half
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.
creative ifs dissidents
If you are creative, you must be dissident.
world unjust dissidents
When we live in a world that is very unjust, you have to be a dissident.
egypt mainstream-culture circumcision
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.
fighting years goal
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.
country believe thinking
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.
doe said gentleness
Who said to kill does not require gentleness?
motivational honesty lying
Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.
life-and-death desire desire-to-live
I have triumphed over both life and death because I no longer desire to live, nor do I any longer fear to die.
religious military egypt
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.
expensive
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.
independent savages truth-is
They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.” I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.
dream sleep loss
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.
homeland
We see our homeland more clearly when we are away from it than when we are in it.