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.
Interpretation
Revolutionary thought stands out for its straightforwardness and integrity in expressing concepts of freedom and justice.
Nawal El Saadawi emphasizes that revolutionary thought is characterized by its clarity and nobility, making complex ideas like freedom and justice accessible through simple language. This suggests that genuine revolutionary ideas do not require the interpretation of intellectuals; instead, they resonate clearly with everyone and invite understanding without elitism.
In practice
During a public speech advocating for social change, one could quote this to emphasize the importance of straightforward communication in activism.
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 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.
When you have increasing power of religious groups, oppression of women increases. Women are oppressed in all religions.
My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite is deadly.
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.
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.
Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man.
Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.
I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up — many people feel small, because they’re small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.
We are born one time only, we can never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from the previous one. We leave childhood without knowing what youth is, we marry without knowing what it is to be married, and even when we enter old age, we don't know what it is we're heading for: the old are innocent children innocent of thier old age. In that sense, man's world is the planet of inexperience.
How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.
All imperfections are forced upon the imperfect, so the 'perfect' can live content and oblivious.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.