“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only… — Edward W. Said Copy Share Image
“Modern Orientalism embodies a systematic discipline of accumulation. Far from this being exclusively an intellectual or theoretical feature, it made Orientalism tend fatally towards… — Edward W. Said Copy Share Image
“Not one of our political spokespeople—the same is true of the Arabs since Abdel Nasser’s time—ever speaks with self-respect and dignity of what we… — Edward W. Said Copy Share Image
“It remains the professional Orientalist's job to piece together a portrait, a restored picture as it were, of the Orient or the Oriental; fragments,… — Edward W. Said Copy Share Image
“Intellectual representations are the activity itself, dependent on a kind of consciousness that is skeptical, engaged, unremittingly devote to rational investigation and moral judgement;… — Edward W. Said Copy Share Image
“Out of this unstable mix of technocracy and national security you have a nostalgia developing for colonialism or religion—atavistic in my opinion, but some… — Edward W. Said Copy Share Image
“Every writer on the Orient (and this is true even of Homer) assumes some Oriental precedent, some previous knowledge of the Orient, to which… — Edward W. Said Copy Share Image
“Music requires a particular type of education which is simply not given to most people. And, as a result, it’s set further apart. It… — Edward W. Said Copy Share Image
“No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting-points, which if followed… — Edward W. Said Copy Share Image
“Liberation as an intellectual mission, born in the resistance and opposition to the confinements and ravages of imperialism, has now shifted from the settled,… — Edward W. Said Copy Share Image
“Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse; its social goals are non-coercive knowledge… — Edward W. Said Copy Share Image
“The Orient is watched, since its almost (but never quite) offensive behavior issues out of a reservoir of infinite peculiarity; the European, whose sensibility… — Edward W. Said Copy Share Image
