Edward Said

Beginning is not only a kind of action. It is also a frame of mind, a kind of work, an attitude, a…

— Edward Said

It's very hard, for example, to justify the thirty-four-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. It's very hard to justify 140…

— Edward Said

[9/11] was bloody-minded destruction for no other reason than to do it.

— Edward Said

Look at situations as contingent, not as inevitable, look at them as the result of a series of historical choices made by…

— Edward Said

I was one of the first people in the Palestinian world, in the late 1970s, to say that there is no military…

— Edward Said

Take a young man from Gaza living in the most horrendous conditions - most of it imposed by Israel - who straps…

— Edward Said

[One task of intellectuals is] to break down the stereotypes and reductive categories that are . . . limiting to human thought and communication.

— Edward Said

I have never known what is Arabic or English, or which one was really mine beyond any doubt. What I do know,…

— Edward Said

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special,…

— Edward Said

The just response to this terrible event [9/11] should be to go immediately to the world community, the United Nations. The rule…

— Edward Said

Since when does a militarily occupied people have the responsibility for a peace movement?

— Edward Said

Refuse to allow yourself to become a vegetable that simply absorbs information, pre-packaged, pre-ideologized , because no message.. is anything but an…

— Edward Said

No cause, no God, no abstract idea can justify the mass slaughter of innocents.

— Edward Said

What we must eliminate are systems of representation that carry with them the authority which has become repressive because it doesn't permit…

— Edward Said

Part of the main plan of imperialism... is that we will give you your history, we will write it for you, we…

— Edward Said

And what terrifies me is that we're entering a phase where if you start to speak about this as something that can…

— Edward Said

In 1985, a group of mujahedeen came to Washington and was greeted by President Reagan, who called them "freedom fighters." These people,…

— Edward Said

If you look at the curricula of most universities and schools in this country [USA], considering our long encounter with the Islamic…

— Edward Said

Theory is taught so as to make the student believe that he or she can become a Marxist, a feminist, an Afrocentrist,…

— Edward Said

Speaking as a New Yorker, I found it a shocking and terrifying event [9/11], particularly the scale of it. At bottom, it…

— Edward Said

The Arab rulers are basically unpopular. They are supported by the United States against the wishes of their people. In all of…

— Edward Said

History is written by those who win and those who dominate.

— Edward Said

These actions were taken with the support and financing of the United States. How can you say this is part of U.S.…

— Edward Said

When you become a public figure, you still think, 'That's really not me; there's more to me than that.'

— Edward Said

All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and…

— Edward Said