Ahmed Elmaghrapy

“To the last we will have learned nothing. In all of us, deep down, there seems to be something granite and unteachable. No one truly believes, despite the hysteria in the streets, that the world of tranquil certainties we were born into is about to be extinguished. No one can accept that an imperial has been annihilated by men with bows and arrows and rusty old guns who live in tents and never wash and cannot read or write. And who am I to jeer at life-giving illusions? Is there any better way to pass these last days than in dreaming of a saviour with a sword who will scatter the enemy hosts and forgive us the errors that have been committed by others in our name and grant us a second chance to build our earthly paradise?”
― J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

“For I was not, as I liked to think, the indulgent pleasure-loving opposite of the cold rigid Colonel. I was the lie that Empire tells itself when times are easy, he the truth that Empire tells when harsh winds blow.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

“When we do it, it is for art. When they [animals] do it, it is for competition. Both may be true. What is disturbing and irrational is the decision to explain human behavior in spiritual terms of a sense of beauty, and animal behavior in mechanistic terms of demonstrating fitness. The object, yet again, seems to be to define humans as higher and unique.”
― Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals

“التحديث يعنى كسر القوالب الجامده والتقاليد التى تعوق المجتمع
الى الامام وما يقتضيه ذلك من نبذ الفكر الخرافى والاعتماد على العقل وتبنى مناهج البحث العلمى”
― أحمد زكريا الشلق, الحداثة والإمبريالية: الغزو الفرنسي وإشكالية نهضة مصر