It is dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world terrorists or fanatic, and you reduce them to some abstract notion. If evil has a geographical place, and if the evil has a name, that is the beginning of fascism. Real life is not this way. You have fanatics and narrow-minded people everywhere.
Interpretation
Labeling people as terrorists or fanatics can lead to oversimplification and dehumanization, fostering prejudice and extremism.
The quote by Marjane Satrapi warns against the simplification of complex human behaviors by labeling individuals or groups as terrorists or fanatics based solely on their geographical or ideological identities. By doing so, we risk reducing them to abstract concepts and ignoring the nuanced realities of their lives, which can breed intolerance and lead to extremist ideologies such as fascism. Satrapi emphasizes that fanaticism and narrow-mindedness exist universally, highlighting the danger of viewing people through a limited lens.
In practice
In a discussion on the effects of terrorism on global politics, this quote can highlight the dangers of labeling.
If it's a good work of adaptation, the book should remain a book and the film should remain a film, and you should not necessarily read the book to see the film. If you do need that, then that means that it's a failure. That is what I think.
I'm not a politician. I don't know how to solve the problems of the world. But as an artist, I have one duty: to ask questions.
I'm not a politician because I'm an artist. Politicians have a very easy answer for a very complicated question. I have a very complicated question for what you consider very easy situations.
For me, drawing is a question of death and life. Every day I draw, I write, I do something.
My mother always told me I had to do 100 times better than a man. I had to work hard at maths, and learn four languages.
The best thing I ever did in my life was to ask, 'Do I like everybody?' And the answer was, 'No.' So why should everybody like me? If people are against me, so what? I'm against them too.
You bring me the deepest joy that can be felt by a man whose invincible belief is that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will unite, not to destroy, but to build, and that the future will belong to those who will have done most for suffering humanity.
I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. If lithium were not available to me, or didn't work for me, the answer would be a simple no... and it would be an answer laced with terror. But lithium does work for me, and therefore I can afford to pose the question. Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It's complicated.
My memories pale as I prevail upon them again and again. They become more and more ghostly. I fear nothing so much as losing them altogether and having only my blank endless mind to live in.
You are not going to destroy this imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy by creating your own version of it.
When we oppose the hidden conscience, it does us hurt. When we betray it, it judges us.
The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.
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