Edward Said

"Family is the first political unit"

"Hope is not optimism but realistic determination"

"Courage is the willingness to act despite fear"

"The intellectual is ultimately someone whose mind matters more to him than anything else."

"Secular criticism must necessarily involve us in questions of power, knowledge, and human interests."

"The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism."

"All nationalisms in their early stages look rather pleasing to people who are not their victims."

"To be an intellectual in the Islamic world is to be engaged in a constant negotiation with tradition and modernity."

"Representations are formations, or as I call them, structures of attitude and reference."

"Culture is a system of meanings and interlocking symbols by means of which the members of society communicate."

"The relationship between culture and imperialism is not incidental but constitutive."

"An intellectual has a duty to position himself in relation to the powers and authorities of the world."

"The point is not to mystify authority but to understand how it operates and to contest it."

"Humanism is the only universalism we have."

"What is at stake is neither the past nor the future but the very possibility of speaking truth to power."

"The Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality."

"Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference of the East."

"Travel is one of the most rewarding forms of introspection."

"The human subject is not some meta-historical substance, but is constituted through discourse and power."

"One cannot deny the Orient, or rather, one can deny it only at enormous cost to oneself."

"Freedom is never given to a man free and clear; it has to be constantly achieved and re-achieved."

"Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny."

"The exiles and the expatriates are not completely present nor completely absent."

"Culture is a system through which a society thinks about itself and defines itself."

"An oppositional intellectual stance cannot be had without a degree of humility."

"The pen and the sword are indeed mightier than many weapons of war."

"To resist the status quo one must first understand it completely and thoroughly."

"The intellectual vocation must embrace a universal, rather than national or ethnic, domain."

"Secular intellectuals are inevitably influenced by the religious background of their cultures."

"One's subject matter is always complicated by the national and cultural contexts in which one works."