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Nawal El Saadawi
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“The trilogy composed of politics, religion and sex is the most sensitive of all issues in any society.”
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“... 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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“Man ... put himself in a tight corner when he decided that woman was innately passive.”
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“Fearing servility, people become servile.”
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“Language, journalism, food, sex. All is politics. Even innocent love stories are politics. ... There is no such thing as neutrality.”
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“Truth is relative, and there is always something missing in truth that prevents it from being perfect.”
Nawal El Saadawi, Egyptian physician, psychiatrist, writer, activist
(1931)