Zaid > Zaid's Quotes

“WHAT DOES IT take to be good at something in which failure is so easy, so effortless?”
― Atul Gawande, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

“Some of the most infamous human rights violations of this era, which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by antidemocratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical free-market “reforms.”
― Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

“When a learned Orientalist traveled in the country of his specialization, it was always with unshakable abstract maxims about the “civilization” he had studied; rarely were Orientalists interested in anything except proving the validity of these musty “truths” by applying them, without great success, to uncomprehending, hence degenerate, natives.”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalism

“In 1985, President Ronald Reagan received a group of ferocious-looking, turban-wearing men who looked like they came from another century. I had been writing about the very same men for The New Yorker. After receiving them in the White House, Reagan spoke to the press, referring to his foreign guests as “freedom fighters.” These were the Afghan mujahideen. They were at the time, guns in hand, battling the “Evil Empire.” For Reagan, they were the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers. In August 1998, another American President ordered missile strikes to kill Osama bin Laden and his men in Afghanistan-based camps. Mr. bin Laden, at whom fifteen American missiles were fired to hit in Afghanistan, was only a few years earlier the moral equivalent of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.”
― Eqbal Ahmad, Terrorism: Theirs & Ours: Theirs and Ours

“The U.S. concern is not who is fundamentalist and who is progressive, who treats women nicely and who treats them badly. That’s not the issue. The issue is who is more likely to ensure the safety of the oil resources that the United States or its corporations could control?”
― Eqbal Ahmad, Terrorism: Theirs & Ours: Theirs and Ours

“Those who glorify the past and seek to re-create it, almost invariably fail, while those who view it comprehensively and critically are able to draw on the past in meaningful and lasting ways.”
― Eqbal Ahmad, Confronting Empire

“منشورات السلطان تتهمنا بأننا شيوعيون ملحدون، نساؤهم وبناتهم عاهرات منحرفات، لا يعترفون بالله ولا بالإسلام أو أية تقاليد وقيم وطنية أو دينية . طبعًا عندما تتعرض أراضيهم وملكياتهم للخطر تصبح فى الحال قيمًا وطنية وتقاليد عريقة”
― صنع الله إبراهيم, وردة

“نحن ضد إنقلابات القصور . الثورة عملية تتم من اسفل لابد ان يشترك فيها الناس ولا يمكن فرضها عليهم وإلا كانت العواقب وخيمة ..”
― صنع الله إبراهيم, وردة

“عمرها ما كانت مشكلتنا مع الله، مشكلتنا مع الذين يعتبرون نفسهم بعد الله.”
― محمد الماغوط (مسرحية شقائق النعمان)

“الذين لا يأتون .. لا يقترفون غير خطيئة الغياب ..
أما نحن فنقترف خطيئة الحياة دونهم !
ونظل .. غارقين في الحنين ..مبللين بدهشة الانتظار !”
― محمد الماغوط

“لاتنحن لأحد مهما كان الأمر ضرورياً ، فقد لاتواتيك الفرصة لتنهض مرة أخرى !”
― محمد الماغوط

“فحتى لو رأيت المشيعين والموقعين بأم عيني يمسحون حبر التواقيع عن بصماتهم بالجدران وثياب المارة.
ولو انتشرت سياط التعذيب على حدود الوطن العربي كحبال الغسيل.
وعلقت المعتقلات في زوايا الشوارع والمنعطفات كصناديق البريد.
وسالت دمائي ودموعي من مجارير الأمم المتحدة.

فلن أنسى ذرة من تراب فلسطين، أو حرفاً من حروفها، لا لأسباب نضالية ووطنية وتاريخية بل لأسباب لاتزال سراً من أسرار هذا الكون كإخفاقات الحب الأول! كبكاء الاطفال الرضع عند الغروب.

لقد رتبت حياتي وكتبي وسريري وحقائبي منذ أيام الطفولة حتى الآن، على هذا الأساس. فكيف أتخلى عن كل شيء مقابل لا شيء. ثم إنني لم أغفر ضربة سوط من أجل الكونغو .. فكيف من أجل فلسطين؟

ولذلك سأدافع عن حقدي وغضبي ودموعي بالأسنان والمخالب.

سأجوع عن كل فقير،
وسأسجن عن كل ثائر،
وأتوسل عن كل مظلوم،
وأهرب إلى الجبال عن كل مطارد،
وأنام في الشوارع عن كل غريب . .

لأن إسرائيل لا تخاف ضحكاتنا بل دموعنا.

وقد يكون هذا زمن التشييع والتطبيع والتركيع، زمن الأرقام لا الاوهام والأحلام ولكنه ليس زماني. سأمحو ركبتي بالممحاة، سآكلهما حتى لا أجثو لعصر أو تيار أو مرحلة. ثم أنا الذي لم أركع وأنا في الابتدائية أمام جدار من أجل جدول الضرب وأنا على خطأ. فهل أركع أمام العالم أجمع بعد هذه السنين وأنا على حق؟”
― محمد الماغوط, سأخون وطني

“حائرٌ أنا
بين أن يبدأ الفرح
وألاَّ يبدأ
مخافةَ ينتهي”
― زياد الرحباني, صديقي الله

“صرت أخاف أنْ أطيل النوم, كي لايذهب الجميع وأظل وحدي.”
― زياد الرحباني, صديقي الله

“ليتني لا أعرف ما أعرف !”
― زياد الرحباني, صديقي الله

“The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves.”
― Frantz Fanon

“Beatrice finally broke the awkward silence. “I’m sorry.” She shrugged her shoulders and looked vacantly past us. “I know we have reached an end.” We hung our heads, ashamed. It was, I suspected, not the first time that a patient had consoled a doctor about the ineffectuality of his discipline.”
― Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

“أتعرفين يا آمنة متى يستسلم الإنسان؟ يستسلم الإنسان حين ينسى مَن يُحب ولا يتذكر سوى نفسه، ورغم أنه يحسُّ أن هذه النفس هي أغلى ما في الوجود في تلك اللحظة بالنسبة إليه، إلا أنها في الحقيقة تكون قد تحولت إلى مدينة فارغة لا بشر فيها ولا أشجار ولا شوارع ولا ذكريات ولا حتى بيوت، ليس فيها سوى ظلال أسوارها ولا شيء غير ذلك.”
― Ibrahim Nasrallah, ‫أعراس آمنة - الملهاة الفلسطينية‬

“Brigadier General Israel Lior, Eshkol’s aide-de-camp, suspected that the never-ending chain of action and reaction would end up in all-out war: In the north a pretty heavy war was conducted over the water sources. The war was directed by the chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, together with the officer in charge of the northern command, David (“Dado”) Elazar. I had an uneasy inner feeling on this matter. All the time it seemed to me that Rabin suffers from what I call the “Syrian syndrome.” In my opinion, nearly all those who served along the front lines of the northern command … were affected by the Syrian syndrome. Service on this front, opposite the Syrian enemy, fuels feelings of exceptional hatred for the Syrian army and people. There is no comparison, its seems to me, between the Israeli’s attitude to the Jordanian or Egyptian army and his attitude to the Syrian army. … We loved to hate them.”
― Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“The casual exclusion of tens of millions of people by free-market ideologues has reproduced frighteningly similar explosive conditions: proud populations that perceive themselves as humiliated by foreign forces, looking to regain their national pride by targeting the most vulnerable in their midst.”
― Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

“Nature abhors a vacuum, and so do political opportunists.”
― Paul Collier, Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World

“I argued that armed struggle was supremely unsuited to the Palestinian condition, that it was a mistake to put so much emphasis on it. I argued that armed struggle is less about arms and more about organization, that a successful armed struggle proceeds to out-administer the adversary and not out-fight him. And that the task of out-administration was a task of out-legitimizing the enemy. Finally, I argued that this out-administration occurs when you identify the primary contradiction of your adversary and expose that contradiction not only to yourselves, which you don’t need to do so much, but to the world at large, and more important, to the people of the adversarial country itself. I argued that Israel’s fundamental contradiction was that it was founded as a symbol of the suffering of humanity . . . at the expense of another people who were innocent of guilt. It’s this contradiction that you have to bring out. And you don’t bring it out by armed struggle. In fact, you suppress this contradiction by armed struggle. The Israeli Zionist organizations continue to portray the Jews as victims of Arab violence.”
― Eqbal Ahmad, Confronting Empire

“Colonial battles were never remembered unless a Custer was killed or a Gordon besieged. Millions of people may die, but the memories are of Custer and Gordon.”
― Eqbal Ahmad, Confronting Empire

“Every policy that begins on the assumption of keeping someone weak forever is doomed to fail.”
― Eqbal Ahmad, Confronting Empire

“If Amman was to benefit as an economic and political power centre during the time that the West Bank was part of Jordan, this was neither entirely inevitable nor purely the result of the social forces of centralisation. In part it was the product of regime policy,14 concerned that the centre of gravity of the state should stay with Amman as an important instrument in the incorporation of the West Bank. For geographical and historical reasons Jerusalem was the obvious alternate pole in the new state, not least because it had been the seat of the British administration under the mandate. As Avi Plascow has put it: ‘The [Jordanian] regime’s general policy was to prevent Jerusalem from either gaining special status or becoming a symbolic focus for divisive West Bank–East Bank antagonism.’15 The authorities in Amman set about the task with conviction.”
― Philip Robins, A History of Jordan

“The notion that aid can alleviate systemic poverty, and has done so, is a myth. Millions in Africa are poorer today because of aid; misery and poverty have not ended but have increased. Aid has been, and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic, and humanitarian disaster for most parts of the developing world.”
― Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa

“Alienation, the “commodification” of social life, a culture of greed, aggression, mindless hedonism and growing nihilism, the steady haemorrhage of meaning and value from human existence: it is hard to find an intelligent discussion of these questions that is not seriously indebted to the Marxist tradition.”
― Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right

“Under capitalism, we are deprived of the power to decide whether we want to produce more hospitals or more breakfast cereals. Under socialism, this freedom would be regularly exercised.”
― Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right

“As in the United States, medical professionals in the Global South most often come from higher-income families; even when they do not, they frequently view medicine as a route of upward mobility. As a result, medical professionals tend to ally themselves with the capitalist class, the “national bourgeoisie,” within these countries. They also frequently support cooperative links between the local capitalist class and business interests in economically dominant countries.4 The class position of health professionals has led them to resist social change that would threaten current class structure, either nationally or internationally.”
― Howard Waitzkin, Health Care Under the Knife: Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health