Edward Said

Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires.

The Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action.

Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience.

The intellectual’s role is to speak the truth to power.

The trouble with identity politics is that it is a prison.

The Palestinian narrative has been systematically excluded from Western discourse.

The media is the modern court where reputations are made and unmade.

Knowledge is not innocent.

The intellectual must be a skeptic, not a believer.

The real enemy is ignorance.

Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between 'the Orient' and (most of the time) 'the Occident.'

The Orient is not an inert fact of nature. It is not merely 'there,' as the Occident is. It is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in the West.

The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony.

Orientalism is a system of representations, a discourse, which produces the Orient.

The Orient is a stage on which the whole East is confined. On this stage, a drama is played out in which the West is the sole actor.

The Orient is an idea that has been fabricated by the West to serve its own interests.

All knowledge is political.

The United States has been a major player in the Middle East for a long time, and its policies have often been detrimental to the people of the region.

I have always believed that the role of the intellectual is to speak truth to power.

Palestine is not a problem, but an entire way of life, a culture, a history, a people.