Edward Said quote

A sense of citizenship and of critical awareness will allow you to see the whole of human history as a common enterprise, and not as a kind of Darwinian race for domination and supremacy.  Cultures are. . . in a state of continuing development and dynamic change. . . As citizens your obligation towards your community is also a commitment to the existence of other communities, and that is what the poet William Butler Yeats called the dialogue of self and soul in the dialogue taking place inside us as vigilant seekers after truth and justice, without which there can be no real education, no dialogue of cultures, no real understanding.

Edward W. Said, AUB Commencement Speech, June 2000

MainGate: American University of Beirut Quarterly Magazine, Fall 2006, Beirut, Lebanon, “From the AUB Archives: In War and Peace:” p. 39