Humanism is the only - I would go so far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.
Interpretation
Humanism serves as our ultimate defense against inhumanity and injustice throughout history.
In this quote, Edward Said emphasizes the importance of humanism as a fundamental ideology that stands against the oppressive and cruel acts that have marred human history. He argues that humanism is not only a form of resistance but perhaps the most significant one, as it nurtures our capacity for empathy and justice, thereby highlighting the need for a moral framework that values human dignity above all else.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of ethics in society.
All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.
Uninformed and yet open to appeals for justice as they are, Americans are capable of reacting as they did to the ANC campaign against apartheid, which finally changed the balance of forces inside South Africa.
Refuse to allow yourself to become a vegetable that simply absorbs information, pre-packaged, pre-ideologized , because no message.. is anything but an ideological package that has gone through a kind of processing.
Since the time of Homer every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.
Much as I have no wish to hurt anyone's feelings, my first obligation has not been to be nice but to be true to my perhaps peculiar memories, experiences and feelings.
It is quite common to hear high officials in Washington and elsewhere speak of changing the map of the Middle East, as if ancient societies and myriad peoples can be shaken up like so many peanuts in a jar.
Centuries hence, when current social and political problems may seem as remote as the problems of the Thirty Years' War are to us, our age may be remembered chiefly for one fact: It was the time when the inhabitants of the earth first made contact with the vast cosmos in which their small planet is embedded.
Nay, do not think I flatter. For what advancement may I hope from thee, That no revenue hast but thy good spirits To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered?
Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.
When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.
The worse a person is the less he feels it.
At the back of my mind I had a sense of us sitting about waiting for some terrible event, and then I would remember that it had already happened.
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