56 Quotes by Edward W. Said

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

What we must eliminate are systems of representation that carry with them the authority which has become repressive because it doesn’t permit or make room for interventions on the part of those represented.

Look at situations as contingent, not as inevitable, look at them as the result of a series of historical choices made by men and women, as facts of society made by human beings, and not as natural or god-given, therefore unchangeable, permanent, irreversible.

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

You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once – there has to be a limit.

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

The definition of terrorism has to be more precise, so that we are able to discriminate between, for example, what it is that the Palestinians are doing to fight the Israeli military occupation and terrorism of the sort that resulted in the World Trade Center bombing.

The history of other cultures is non-existent until it erupts in confrontation with the United States.

I don’t remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result.