Humanism is the only - I would go so far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.
Interpretation
Humanism serves as our ultimate defense against inhumanity and injustice throughout history.
In this quote, Edward Said emphasizes the importance of humanism as a fundamental ideology that stands against the oppressive and cruel acts that have marred human history. He argues that humanism is not only a form of resistance but perhaps the most significant one, as it nurtures our capacity for empathy and justice, thereby highlighting the need for a moral framework that values human dignity above all else.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of ethics in society.
All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.
Uninformed and yet open to appeals for justice as they are, Americans are capable of reacting as they did to the ANC campaign against apartheid, which finally changed the balance of forces inside South Africa.
Refuse to allow yourself to become a vegetable that simply absorbs information, pre-packaged, pre-ideologized , because no message.. is anything but an ideological package that has gone through a kind of processing.
Since the time of Homer every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.
Much as I have no wish to hurt anyone's feelings, my first obligation has not been to be nice but to be true to my perhaps peculiar memories, experiences and feelings.
It is quite common to hear high officials in Washington and elsewhere speak of changing the map of the Middle East, as if ancient societies and myriad peoples can be shaken up like so many peanuts in a jar.
An independent Ireland would see its own independence in jeopardy the moment it saw the independence of Britain seriously threatened. Mutual self-interest would make the peoples of these two islands, if both independent, the closest possible allies in a moment of real national danger to either.
Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
How we put our collective talents to work is a social issue, not solely a personal one.
Incens'd with indignation Satan stood Unterrify'd, and like a comet burn'd That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In th' arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war.
I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.
Love for one's country is part of faith.
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