Khuloud Saba > Khuloud's Quotes

“Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“there is no glory in punishing”
― Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

“I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“the identity of an individual is essentially a function of her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute”
― Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity

“إنها لمسألة غير تافهة أن تسأل : في عالم اللامنطق وانعدام القانون. في العالم المحكوم بالطغيان وسطوة الآلهة والقتل وميراث الأجداد المنقرضين. عالم النزوة والمزاج والفردية كيف تفكر وتتحرك.كيف تتقدم. بل كيف تتشكل؟ ؟

هل باستطاعة الحب أن يتجاوز الحالة؟ وهل تأسيس حالة حب على نحو صحي ضد عالم النفي اللاعقلاني ينقذ العالم والنفس؟

ليكن السؤال هكذا : الإنسان أولا أم المجتمع؟ وهل بالإمكان بناء عالم جديد بإنسان قديم ؟”
― حيدر حيدر, وليمة لأعشاب البحر: نشيد الموت

“The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength, each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“لا يمكننا أن نقارن بين الأنثى والذكر في النوع البشري إلا من الزاوية الإنسانية ولا يُعرف الإنسان إلا بأنه كائن غير معطى وأنه يصنع نفسه بنفسه ويقرر ما هو عليه”
― سيمون دي بوفوار, الجنس الآخر

“The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another; it is never the given that confers superiorities: ‘virtue’, as the ancients called it, is defined on the level of ‘that which depends on us’.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“Why is love beyond all measure of other human possibilities so rich and such a sweet burden for the one who has been struck by it? Because we change ourselves into that which we love, and yet remain ourselves. Then we would like to thank the beloved, but find nothing that would do it adequately. We can only be thankful to ourselves. Love transforms gratitude into faithfulness to ourselves and into an unconditional faith in the Other. Thus love steadily expands its most intimate secret. Closeness here is existence in the greatest distance from the other- the distance that allows nothing to dissolve - but rather presents the “thou” in the transparent, but “incomprehensible” revelation of the “just there”. That the presence of the other breaks into our own life - this is what no feeling can fully encompass. Human fate gives itself to human fate, and it is the task of pure love to keep this self-surrender as vital as on the first day.”
― Martin Heidegger

“I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.”
― Michel Foucault

“Knowledge is not for knowing: knowledge is for cutting.”
― Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader

“What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is related only to objects and not to individuals, or to life. That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts who are artists. But couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?”
― Michel Foucault

“...if you are not like everybody else, then you are abnormal, if you are abnormal , then you are sick. These three categories, not being like everybody else, not being normal and being sick are in fact very different but have been reduced to the same thing”
― Michel Foucault

“The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).”
― Michel Foucault

“The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”
― Michel Foucault

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
― John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy

“أي نوع من الصلات هذه التي ستربطنا بأرض نمحّي كل لحظة فوق ترابها ! الأرض تصبح خرافة .الجغرافيا خرافة .ومخدرين تعبرنا الأيام وتتصرف فينا الحوادث”
― سعد الله ونوس, حفلة سمر من أجل 5 حزيران

“متى تدرك أيها الشاب ,أن العلم هو العلم,وأن النعوت وتحيزات الاخلاق تفسد العلم,وتملؤه بالضلالات”
― سعد الله ونوس, منمنمات تاريخية

“من دليل بغداد العميق نحدثكم . من ليل الويل والموت والجثث نحدثكم . تقولون .. فخار يكسر بعضه .. ومن يتزوج أمنا نناديه عمنا .. لا أحد يستطيع أن يمنعكم من أن تقولوا ذلك . لكل واحد رأي وتقولون .. هذا رأينا لا أحد يستطيع أن يمنعكم من أن تقولوا هذا رأينا . لكن إذا التفتم يوما ، ووجدتم أنفسكم غرباء في بيوتكم . .
الرجل الرابع : إذا عضكم الجوع ووجدتم أنفسكم بلا بيوت . .
زمرد : إذا تدحرجت الرؤوس . واستقبلكم الموت على عتبة صبح كئيب .
المجموعة : إذا هبط عليكم ليل ثقيل وملئ بالويل لا تنسوا أنكم قلتم يوما . فخار يكسر بعضه .. ومن يتزوج أمنا نناديه عمنا من ليل بغداد العميق نحدثكم . من ليل الويل والموت والجثث نحدثكم .”
― سعد الله ونوس, مغامرة رأس المملوك جابر

“لا.. لست يائساً. قال ابن خلدون ولعله محق، أننا نعيش زمن اضمحلال. ولكن إذا لم يعمل المرء شيئاً في مثل هذا الزمن، ففي أي زمن سيعمل؟! سألتِ كم سنصمد! وأقول لك: إننا سنصمد حتى يتغير شيء في هذه الأمة، لا بد أن يتغير شيء وإلا فقدنا حقنا في الوجود.”
― سعد الله ونوس, منمنمات تاريخية

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. […]. I'm two, and both keep their distance — Siamese twins that aren't attached.”
― Fernando Pessoa , The Book of Disquiet

“I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

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

“When we revolt it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe”
― Frantz Fanon

“They realize at last that change does not mean reform, that change does not mean improvement.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

“What makes a bourgeoisie is not its attitude, taste, or manners. It is not even its aspirations. The bourgeoisie is above all the direct product of precise economic realities.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

“Jung locates the collective unconscious in the inherited cerebral matter. But there is no need to resort to the genes; the collective unconscious is quite simply the repository of prejudices, myths, and collective attitudes of a particular group.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks