“Europe’s elites are characterised by cultural self-loathing, combined with a heavy dose of cowardice.”

“Self-loathing is a natural and a necessary consequence of those intellectual views of self that are implied in repentance.”

“Why does shame and self-loathing become cruelty to the innocent?”

“People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite, and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.”

“God, is this all it is, the ricocheting down the corridor of laughter and tears? Of self-worship and self-loathing? Of glory and disgust?”

“I have not the slightest doubt that what passes for Hindu tolerance vis-a-vis Islam is no more than a combination of ignorance and cowardice.”

“Almost every golden age of geo-cultural domains has been characterised by good governance, exchanges, borrowing, innovation and the adaptation of earlier contributions to forms of knowledge, and rationalism.”

“What characterises anthropological research today more than anything is the recognition of complexity; the world is complex, cultures are complex, communities are complex, and analytical strategies must acknowledge complexity.”

“Cultural elites in countries that dominate peoples have adapted subject people’s religion for their own purposes.”

“To be one's self, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity.”