Fatema Mernissi Quotes

#1. She would take him to faraway lands to observe foreign ways, so he could get closer to the strangeness within himself.

Fatema Mernissi

#2. There are two prerequisites to growing wings: the first is to feel encircled and the second is to believe that you can break the circle.

Fatema Mernissi

#3. Dignity is to have a dream, a strong one, which gives you a vision, a world where you have a place, where whatever it is you have to contribute makes a difference.

Fatema Mernissi

#4. To be happy a woman had to think hard, during long silent hours, about how to make each small step forward.

Fatema Mernissi

#5. I am intelligent enough to be critical towards the West and take what I need and reject what is bad for me.

Fatema Mernissi

#6. Maturity is when you start feeling the motion of zaman (time) as if it is a sensuous caress. p.216

Fatema Mernissi

#7. Nature is woman's best friend,' she [Yasmina] often said. 'If you're having troubles, you just swim in the water, stretch out in a field, or look up at the stars. That's how a woman cures her fears'.

Fatema Mernissi

#8. The real mistake of women was to let the memoir, the collective, the history, space of producing history - to let it in the hands of men.

Fatema Mernissi

#9. Being frozen into the passive position of an object whose very existence depends on the eye of its beholder turn the educated modern Western women into a harem slave.

Fatema Mernissi

#10. There are many ways to be beautiful. Fighting, swearing, and ignoring tradition could make a women irresistible.

Fatema Mernissi

#11. Morocco is such a beautiful place. It's incredibly beautiful. And also it is captivating place because for a writer, you feel that you make impact.

Fatema Mernissi

#12. Someone else is going to read for me or go at my place to the mosque, and/or to tell me you shouldn't take anything from the West because the West is the enemy and so on. It is to me to decide.

Fatema Mernissi

#13. Beauty is within; you just have to bring it out.

Fatema Mernissi

#14. A woman could be totally powerless, and still give meaning to her life by dreaming about flight.

Fatema Mernissi

#15. Writing is one of the most ancient forms of prayer. To write is to believe communication is possible that other people are good, that you can awaken their generosity and their desire to do better.

Fatema Mernissi

#16. I, as a Muslim woman living in 1993, I want to have two things - the mosque and the satellite, both at the same time. And no one can mutilate me by telling me I cannot have the mosque or the Koran.

Fatema Mernissi

#17. But when your situation is hopeless, all you can do is turn the world upside down, transform it according to your wishes, and create anew.

Fatema Mernissi

#18. Pessimism is the luxury of the powerful.

Fatema Mernissi

#19. I knew that if you moved around, your mind worked faster, because you were constantly seeing new things that you had to respond to.

Fatema Mernissi

#20. The most precious gift God gave humans is reason. Its best use is the search for knowledge. To know the human environment, to know the earth and galaxies, is to know God. Knowledge (science) is the best form of prayer.

Fatema Mernissi

#21. When a woman thinks she is nothing, the little sparrows cry.
Who can defend them on the terrace , if no one has the vision of a world without slingshots?

Fatema Mernissi

#22. One cannot understand what's happening to women in the Middle East if they don't realize that the mothers are a strong, progressive force. The mothers push the daughters to get out of the harem, to get the education, to achieve what they could not even dream of.

Fatema Mernissi

#23. When you are in trouble, you need to put all your energies into thinking that there is a way out. Then, the bottom, the dark hole, becomes just a springboard from which you can leap so high that your head might hit a cloud.

Fatema Mernissi

#24. To be alive is to move around, to search for better places, to scavenge the planet looking for more hospitable islands.

Fatema Mernissi

#25. A human being was connected to the world through his or her skin and how could someone with clogged pores feel the environment or be sensitive to its vibrations?

Fatema Mernissi