“Western intellectuals fail to understand and appreciate the form of society that has given us the ability to alter those defaults. They believe both that the most productive human cultures are almost totally dysfunctional, and that evolved, successful societies may be re-drawn at will by intellectuals with political and cultural power. They write as if relative pockets of Western poverty should occasion our astonishment, when in fact the term, until recently, for almost infinitely worse levels of poverty, was simply "human life."”

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Alan Charles Kors46

American academic 1943

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

“In general, Western culture is deeply post-Christian. It is the product of the Enlightenment, which introduced into European culture the leaven of secularism that has by now permeated Western society. While most of the original Enlightenment thinkers were themselves theists, the majority of Western intellectuals today no longer considers theological knowledge to be possible. The person who follows the pursuit of reason unflinchingly toward its end will be atheistic or, at best, agnostic.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

[2008, July, God Is Not Dead Yet, Christianity Today, 52, 7, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/july/13.22.html?start=5]

“No culture has ever exceeded Western civilization in power and extent. Our society now covers more than half of the globe, extending in space from Poland to the east of Australia i n the west. In the course of this expansion, most of it during the last five centuries, the power of Western civilization has been so great that it has destroyed, almost without thinking of it, hundreds of other societies, including five or six other civilizations.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 334

“Western culture from the start has swerved from femaleness. The last western society to worship female powers was Minoan Crete. And significantly, that fell and did not rise again.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 8

“The organism of the Western society and culture seems to be undergoing one of the deepest and most significant crises of its life. The crisis is far greater than the ordinary; its depth is unfathomable, its end not yet in sight, and the whole of the Western society is involved in it. It is the crisis of a Sensate culture, now in its overripe stage, the culture that has dominated the Western World during the last five centuries. It is also the crisis of a contractual (capitalistic) society associated with it. In this sense we are experiencing one of the sharpest turns in the historical road.”

Pitirim Sorokin (1889–1968) American sociologist

Pitirim Sorokin (1957) Social and Cultural Dynamics http://books.google.nl/books?id=fbZyka2W_1cC , p. 622; as cited in: " Culture in Crisis: The Visionary Theories of Pitirim Sorokin http://satyagraha.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/pitirim-sorkin-crisis-of-modernity/." Satyagraha – Cultural Psychology, Aug. 19, 2010

“This effort is shared with other Indian intellectuals, e. g. with Claude Alvares who shows how “attempts were made to destroy non-Western technologies”, and until recently if not today, “even the idea that other cultures may have had thriving technologies was calculatingly destroyed.””

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Decolonizing the Hindu Mind (2001)

“The widespread inability to understand technological artifacts as fabricated entities, as social and cultural phenomena, derives from the fact that in retrospect only those technologies that prove functional for a culture and can be integrated into everyday life are 'left over.' However, the perception of what is functional, successful and useful is itself the product of social and cultural--and last but not least--political and economic processes. Selection processes and abandoned products and product forms are usually not discussed.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

Interview with Furtherfield http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=408

“The US has always taken velvet revolution into consideration by promoting Western culture in the society and by causing strife between people and the government through propaganda, organizing certain individuals, psychological warfare and making intentional use of media, intellectual circles, university student's establishments and feminism movements in order to implement its interfering policies.”

Ahmad Khatami (1960) Iranian ayatollah

Cleric says US seeks velvet revolution http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=16910&sectionid=351020101, Press TV, 20 Jul 2007. <br class="br">Velvet Revolution

“When we lack the ability to talk back to entities that are culturally and politically powerful, the very foundations of free speech and democratic society are called into question.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Eight, "Corporate Censorship"

“Poetry is the art of using words charged with their utmost meaning. A society whose intellectual leaders lose the skill to shape, appreciate, and understand the power of language will become the slaves of those who retain it — be they politicians, preachers, copywriters, or newscasters.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991)

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