Life & Wisdom Quote by Tahar Ben Jelloun

Ben Jelloun’s line reads like a refusal to let history be written by adrenaline. The insistence on having “our say” signals a political demand - voice as citizenship - but he frames that demand with a poet’s suspicion of brute force. “Violence, aggression or fear” aren’t just tactics to avoid; they’re portrayed as contagious languages that corrupt the message itself. The subtext is clear: if you reach for intimidation, you’ve already conceded the moral argument and narrowed your future to perpetual retaliation.

The craft is in the tonal pairing: “calmly and forcefully.” He rejects the cliché that calm equals passivity, arguing instead for a disciplined kind of pressure - the sort that survives outside the heat of a crisis and can be translated into institutions, laws, and lasting norms. It’s not pacifism as softness; it’s strategy as self-control.

Then comes the most loaded phrase: “the new world era.” That’s utopian on purpose, but also faintly threatening. It implies that modernity - globalization, postcolonial reckoning, plural societies, media saturation - is a gate you don’t stroll through accidentally. Entry requires a method: “dialogue with the other side.” Not “the enemy,” not “the oppressor,” but a counterpart whose existence you can’t wish away. In a region and century marked by colonial afterlives, sectarianism, and state violence, Ben Jelloun is wagering that the only truly radical act is refusing the seduction of righteous fury long enough to negotiate a future.