Latest Edward Said Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

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

  Edward Said

  Reason, Destruction, Bloody

  Source: progressive.org

• Speaking as a New Yorker, I found [September 11] a shocking and terrifying event, particularly the scale of it.

  Edward Said

  September 11, Events, Found

  Source: progressive.org

• [Mujahedeen], by the way, don't represent Islam in any formal sense. They're not imams or sheiks. They are self-appointed warriors for Islam.

  Edward Said

  Warrior, Self, Islam

  Source: www.progressive.org

• It was thought that to rally Islam against godless communism would be doing the Soviet Union a very bad turn indeed, and that, in fact, transpired. In 1985, a group of mujahedeen came to Washington and was greeted by President [Ronald] Reagan, who called them "freedom fighters."

  Edward Said

  President, Islam, Facts

  Source: www.progressive.org

• Ironically, many of people, including Osama bin Laden and the mujahedeen, were, in fact, nourished by the United States in the early eighties in its efforts to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

  Edward Said

  People, Effort, Facts

  Source: www.progressive.org

• 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 Israeli settlements and roughly 400,000 settlers. These actions were taken with the support and financing of the United States.

  Edward Said

  Taken, Years, Support

  Source: www.progressive.org

• In the Islamic world, the U.S. is seen in two quite different ways. One view recognizes what an extraordinary country the U.S. is.The other view is of the official United States, the United States of armies and interventions. The United States that in 1953 overthrew the nationalist government of Mossadegh in Iran and brought back the shah. The United States that has been involved first in the Gulf War and then in the tremendously damaging sanctions against Iraqi civilians. The United States that is the supporter of Israel against the Palestinians.

  Edward Said

  Country, War, Islamic

  Source: www.progressive.org

• If you live in the [Middle East] area, you see [U.S actions] as part of a continuing drive for dominance, and with it a kind of obduracy, a stubborn opposition to the wishes and desires and aspirations of the people there.

  Edward Said

  People, Desire, Wish

  Source: www.progressive.org

• [Roots of terrorism] come out of a long dialectic of U.S. involvement in the affairs of the Islamic world, the oil-producing world, the Arab world, the Middle East - those areas that are considered to be essential to U.S. interests and security.

  Edward Said

  Islamic, Oil, Roots

  Source: www.progressive.org

• Osama bin Laden's organization has spun out from him and is now probably independent of him. There will be others who will appear and reappear. This is why we need a much more precise, a much more defined, a much more patiently constructed campaign, as well as one that surveys not just the terrorists' presence but the root causes of terrorism, which are ascertainable.

  Edward Said

  Independent, Roots, Organization

  Source: www.progressive.org

• The just response to this terrible event [9/11] should be to go immediately to the world community, the United Nations. The rule of international law should be marshaled, but it's probably too late because the United States has never done that; it's always gone it alone.

  Edward Said

  Law, Terrible Events, Community

  Source: www.progressive.org

• This [terrorists attacks on 9/11] was part of nothing. It was a leap into another realm - the realm of crazy abstractions and mythological generalities, involving people who have hijacked Islam for their own purposes. It's important not to fall into that trap and to try to respond with a metaphysical retaliation of some sort.

  Edward Said

  Crazy, Fall, People

  Source: www.progressive.org

• Note that there was no claim for these attacks [on 9/11]. There were no demands. There were no statements. It was a silent piece of terror.

  Edward Said

  Pieces, Demand, Silent

  Source: www.progressive.org

• It [9/11] transcended the political and moved into the metaphysical. There was a kind of cosmic, demonic quality of mind at work here, which refused to have any interest in dialogue and political organization and persuasion. This was bloody-minded destruction for no other reason than to do it.

  Edward Said

  Organization, Political, Mind

  Source: www.progressive.org

• [9/11] was not meant to be argued with. It wasn't part of any negotiation. No message was intended with it. It spoke for itself, which is unusual.

  Edward Said

  Were Not Meant To Be, Messages, Unusual

  Source: www.progressive.org

• Speaking as a New Yorker, I found it a shocking and terrifying event [9/11], particularly the scale of it. At bottom, it was an implacable desire to do harm to innocent people. It was aimed at symbols: the World Trade Center, the heart of American capitalism, and the Pentagon, the headquarters of the American military establishment.

  Edward Said

  Military, Heart, People

  Source: www.progressive.org

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

  Edward Said

  Communication, Tasks, Stereotype

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

• Captain Ahab was a man possessed with an obsessional drive to pursue the white whale which had harmed him - which had torn his leg out - to the ends of the Earth, no matter what happened. In the final scene of the novel, Captain Ahab is being borne out to sea, wrapped around the white whale with the rope of his own harpoon and going obviously to his death. It was a scene of almost suicidal finality.

  Edward Said

  Suicidal, Men, Ahab

  Source: www.progressive.org

• All the words that George Bush used in public during the early stages of the crisis - "wanted, dead or alive," "a crusade," etc. - suggest not so much an orderly and considered progress towards bringing the man to justice according to international norms, but rather something apocalyptic, something of the order of the criminal atrocity itself. That will make matters a lot, lot worse, because there are always consequences.

  Edward Said

  Men, Order, Justice

  Source: www.progressive.org

• The people who perpetrated the terror of the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings are something different because these people were obviously not desperate and poor refugee dwellers. They were middle class, educated enough to speak English, to be able to go to flight school, to come to America, to live in Florida.

  Edward Said

  School, Florida, Speak English

  Source: www.progressive.org

• 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.

  Edward Said

  Military, Fighting, Example

  Source: www.progressive.org

• Take a young man from Gaza living in the most horrendous conditions - most of it imposed by Israel - who straps dynamite around himself and then throws himself into a crowd of Israelis. I've never condoned or agreed with it, but at least it is understandable as the desperate wish of a human being who feels himself being crowded out of life and all of his surroundings, who sees his fellow citizens, other Palestinians, his parents, sisters, and brothers, suffering, being injured, or being killed. He wants to do something, to strike back.

  Edward Said

  Brother, Men, Israel

  Source: www.progressive.org

• What is quite worrisome is the absence of analysis and reflection. Take the word "terrorism." It has become synonymous now with anti-Americanism, which, in turn, has become synonymous with being critical of the United States, which, in turn, has become synonymous with being unpatriotic. That's an unacceptable series of equations.

  Edward Said

  Reflection, United States, Analysis

  Source: www.progressive.org

• And what terrifies me is that we're entering a phase where if you start to speak about this as something that can be understood historically - without any sympathy - you are going to be thought of as unpatriotic, and you are going to be forbidden. It's very dangerous. It is precisely incumbent on every citizen to quite understand the world we're living in and the history we are a part of and we are forming as a superpower.

  Edward Said

  Citizens, Entering, World

  Source: www.progressive.org

• There's been essentially the same analysis over and over again and very little allowance made for different views and interpretations and reflections.

  Edward Said

  Reflection, Views, Different

  Source: www.progressive.org