Maha Alsuwaidi

“The woman wanderer goes forth to seek the Land of Freedom.

“How am I to get there?” Reason answers: “here is one way, and one only. Down the banks of Labour, through the water of suffering. There is no other.”

The woman cries out: “For what do I go to this far land which no one has ever reached? Oh, I am alone! I am utterly alone!”

But soon she hears the sounds of feet, ‘a thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, and they beat this way!’

“They are the feet of those who shall follow you. Lead on.”
― Olive Schreiner

“لا تكتبي لي جوابا ...لا تكترثي ، لا تقولي شيئا . إنني أعود إليك مثلما يعود اليتيم إلى ملجأه الوحيد ، و سأظل أعود : أعطيكِ رأسي المبتل لتجففيه بعد أن اختار الشقي أن يسير تحت المزاريب .”
― غسان كنفاني, رسائل غسان كنفاني إلى غادة السمان

“What about animals slaughtered for our consumption? who among us would be able to continue eating pork chops after visiting a factory farm in which pigs are half-blind and cannot even properly walk, but are just fattened to be killed? And what about, say, torture and suffering of millions we know about, but choose to ignore? Imagine the effect of having to watch a snuff movie portraying what goes on thousands of times a day around the world: brutal acts of torture, the picking out of eyes, the crushing of testicles -the list cannot bear recounting. Would the watcher be able to continue going on as usual? Yes, but only if he or she were able somehow to forget -in an act which suspended symbolic efficiency -what had been witnessed. This forgetting entails a gesture of what is called fetishist disavowal: "I know it, but I don't want to know that I know, so I don't know." I know it, but I refuse to fully assume the consequences of this knowledge, so that I can continue acting as if I don't know it.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections

“يمكن أن نستنتج بأن الحياة أحيانا تصوغ من الأفكار النبيلة سخرية متوحشة، أو أن النوايا بغض النظر عن إن كانت حسنة أو سيئة. لا يوجد لها في الحياة التاريخية أهمية خاصة. ولذلك يمكن أن تنشأ نتائج إيجابية من حوادث أنانية، ونتائج سيئة من دوافع نبيلة.”
― Alija Izetbegović