Nawal El Saadawi Quotes

We will have demonstrations until the injustices that have caused them are eliminated.

I am not the least bit surprised that injustice persists. I'm also not surprised that resistance to injustice persists.

There's a lot of injustice in the world and it's what I sing about in my music and what I try to confront in my life as an activist.

Injustice experienced in the flesh, in deeply wounded flesh, is the stuff out of which change explodes.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

It takes a lot of punishment to be able to do anything to change the social order.

I'm not quite sure precisely when social and political activism became a visible brand of my DNA, but it seems to me that I was born into it. It is hard to be born into the experience in the world of poverty and not develop some instinct for survival and resistance to those things that oppress you.

I think history repeats itself. There's a constant conversation between the oppressed and the oppressor. No matter what your field is, whether it's gender equality, the Time's Up movement, or diversity casting, it's always going to be a back-and-forth battle.

The disparity between the haves and have-nots was always blatantly obvious to me, and it's that exact gap that drove me to start writing and pick up a pen. I wanted to explain and understand the world around me because it was easy to see it was corrupted.

It's always important, when we experience injustice in this nation, that people in power understand that we will not take that injustice quietly.

It is better to protest than to accept injustice.

We were born into an unjust system; we are not prepared to grow old in it.

I'm not sure I'm trying to communicate a message. I'm just trying to be part of the movement away from the unacceptable present.

You can only watch injustice go on for so long until you're compelled to say something. To speak out against it.

Protest and anger practically always derives from hope, and the shouting out against injustice is always in the hope of those injustices being somewhat corrected and a little more justice established.

The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in my dying for a world ruled by them. I made up my mind that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.

Dissidents can't be dissidents forever; we are dissidents because we don't want to be dissidents.

Social paralysis is strong and stands firmly in the way of change on the ground level. As allies, we have to prepare ourselves to step into the fire when necessary, even - and especially - when said fire is merely a still-lit cigarette tossed carelessly onto the street.

Probably I understand very much the people who rise against injustice.

Indignation must always be the answer to indignity. Reality is not destiny.

The fundamental driving force for me is to create a change in the world we live in... It is about exploitation, plundering and degradation. I have a small possibility to participate in the resistance. Most of the things that I do are part of a resistance, a form of solidarity work.

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

Acceptance does not mean that you placidly acquiesce to the myriad injustices that are all around you. In fact, that you are incensed about these injustices is the very reason you need to try your level best to 'right' these 'wrongs.'

Books can capture injustices in a way that stays with you and makes you want to do something about them. That's why they are so powerful.

I'd ask myself, 'What do I think is really unjust?' That should be a starting point for how you engage with the world.