Top 99 Quotes & Sayings by Nawal El Saadawi

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

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?'

In history, the millions win; that is democracy.

Unity is power; without unity women cannot fight for their rights anywhere.

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

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.

When you are intelligent and beautiful you face a lot of problems. If you are beautiful and stupid then it's easy.

My three husbands were afraid of me. I am a very powerful woman.

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

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.

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

War criminals in the U.S. and Israel are not punished: no international court has the courage to put them on trial.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Plastic surgery is a postmodern veil.

We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism.

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.

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.

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.

If you are creative, you must be dissident.

I never stopped writing. I started writing when I was twelve years of age. And I was writing all the time. But nothing was translated until thirty years after I started writing, when The Hidden Face of Eve was translated in 1980.

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

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.

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

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

They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.” I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.

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.

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.

There is not a revolution that succe Women were everywhere in the revolution. Women participated in it, and many women were killed.

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.

She is free to do what she wants, and free not to do it.

Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.

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.

Love has made me a different person. It has made the world beautiful.

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

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.

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.

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

Home to me is the world because my books have been translated into more than 30 languages. People feel they know me and the minute they talk about my life or books I feel at home. Home is where you are appreciated, safe and protected, creative, and where you are loved – not where you are put in prison.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

Democracy is not just freedom to criticize the government or head of state, or to hold parliamentary elections. True democracy obtains only when the people - women, men, young people, children - have the ability to change the system of industrial capitalism that has oppressed them since the earliest days of slavery: a system based on class division, patriarchy, and military might, a hierarchical system that subjugates people merely because they are born poor, or female, or dark-skinned.

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.

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.

We cannot be liberated as women in a society built on class oppression or gender oppression or religious oppression.

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.

Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith.

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.