Quotes about east (832 quotes, page 8) | Quotes of famous people

“I, some years back, knew a couple of men who did go and who had all kinds of allusions about the exotic Far East, one a young man, college age, the other an older man. And it was a shattering experience for them that they suppressed, because it told them about the reality of evil and the reality of man as a fallen creatures which they did not want to admit. And I think their suppression of the reality marks our age. We do not want, as an age, to know what evil is, unless, of course, it was Hitler and we killed him and now we just mope up on a few of these extremists.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Decadence and the New Age (March 10, 1989)

Men , Age , Thinking , Reality

“De Bellaigue is at pains to portray Mossadegh as — in the words of the jacket copy — “one of the first liberals of the Middle East, a man whose conception of liberty was as sophisticated as any in Europe or America.” But the trouble is, there is nothing in Mossadegh’s career — spanning half a century, as provincial governor, cabinet minister, and finally prime minister — to portray him as even remotely a lover of liberty. De Bellaigue quotes Mossadegh as saying that a trusted leader is “that person whose every word is accepted and followed by the people.” To which de Bellaigue adds: “His understanding of democracy would always be coloured by traditional ideas of Muslim leadership, whereby the community chooses a man of outstanding virtue and follows him wherever he takes them.” Word for word, that could have been the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s definition of a true leader. Mossadegh also made a habit of appearing in his street meetings with a copy of the Koran in hand. According to de Bellaigue, Mossadegh liked to say that “anyone forgetting Islam is base and dishonourable, and should be killed.” During his premiership, Mossadegh demonstrated his dictatorial tendency to the full: Not once did he hold a full meeting of the council of ministers, ignoring the constitutional rule of collective responsibility. He dissolved the senate, the second chamber of the Iranian parliament, and shut down the Majlis, the lower house. He suspended a general election before all the seats had been decided and chose to rule with absolute power. He disbanded the high council of national currency and dismissed the supreme court. During much of his tenure, Tehran lived under a curfew while hundreds of his opponents were imprisoned. Toward the end of his premiership, almost all of his friends and allies had broken with him. Some even wrote to the secretary general of the United Nations to intervene to end Mossadegh’s dictatorship. But was Mossadegh a man of the people, as de Bellaigue portrays him? Again, the author’s own account provides a different picture. A landowning prince and the great-great-grandson of a Qajar king, Mossadegh belonged to the so-called thousand families who owned Iran. He and all his children were able to undertake expensive studies in Switzerland and France. The children had French nannies and, when they fell sick, were sent to Paris or Geneva for treatment. (De Bellaigue even insinuates that Mossadegh might have had a French sweetheart, although that is improbable.) On the one occasion when Mossadegh was sent to internal exile, he took with him a whole retinue, including his cook… As a model of patriotism, too, Mossadegh is unconvincing. According to his own memoirs, at the end of his law studies in Switzerland, he had decided to stay there and acquire Swiss citizenship. He changed his mind when he was told that he would have to wait ten years for that privilege. At the same time, Farmanfarma secured a “good post” for him in Iran, tempting him back home.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Myths of Mossadegh" https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/302213/myths-mossadegh/page/0/1, National Review (June 25, 2012).

Pain , Children , People , Family

“It began to worry me that I could never possibly settle in England now, not after Tokyo nude-shows and sliced green chillies, brown children sluicing at the road-pump, the air-conditioned hum in bedrooms big as ballrooms, negligible income-tax, curry tiffins, being the big man in the big car, the bars of all the airports of Africa and the East.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Children , Cars

“Recently Africa was polled as the most devout region in the world, and this includes deep devotion to the continent’s various harmful superstitions. Devoutness and underdevelopment, poverty, misery and superstition co-exist and co-relate. It should be said that the dominant religious faiths in the region are faiths alien to the continent. That means African Christians are more devout than Europeans whose missionaries brought Christianity to Africa. African Muslims are more devout than Muslims in the Middle East, whose jihadists and clerics introduced Islam to the region.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

A Manifesto for a Skeptical Africa (2012)

World , Faith

“The world's energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U. S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński book The Grand Chessboard

Source: The Grand Chessboard (1997), Chapter 5, The Eurasian Balkans, p. 125.

World , Nature , Sea

“If once again Germany destabilizes Europe, then Germany will be not be divided again, but wiped off the map. East and West have the necessary technology in order to enforce this verdict. If Germany begins again, there is no other solution.”

Lech Wałęsa (1943) Polish politician, Nobel Peace Prize winner, former President of Poland

Wenn Deutschland noch einmal Europa destabilisiert dann wird Deutschland nicht mehr geteilt, sondern von der Landkarte gefegt werden. Ost und West haben die notwendige Technik, um dieses Verdikt auch vollstrecken zu können. Wenn Deutschland wieder anfängt, bleibt keine andere Lösung. - From the report of the German magazine DER SPIEGEL 15/1990 http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13498691.html about an interview of Wałęsa by Dutch weekly Elsevier http://www.elsevier.nl/ of 7 April 1990, which was partially reprinted, with an additional Pancho caricature http://wissen.spiegel.de/wissen/image/show.html?did=13498691&aref=image036/2006/05/15/cq-sp199001502800280.pdf&thumb=false, by French Le Monde http://www.lemonde.fr/

“O Canada! Where pines and maples grow.
Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow.
How dear to us thy broad domain,
From East to Western Sea,
Thou land of hope for all who toil!
Thou True North, strong and free!”

Robert Stanley Weir (1856–1926) Canadian judge and poet

O Canada (1908)

Hope , Strong , Sea

“The virgin fertility of our soils and the vast amount of unskilled labor have been more of a curse than a blessing to agriculture. This exhaustive system for cultivation, the destruction of forest, the rapid and almost constant decomposition of organic matter, have made our agricultural problem one requiring more brains than of the North, East or West.”

George Washington Carver (1864–1943) botanist

The Need of Scientific Agriculture in the South (Tuskegee Institute, 1902)

Problem

“Despite declining catches, New England fishermen continue to receive state and federal tax incentives that encourage them — in some cases all but compel them — to acquire bigger boats and to harvest the seas more intensively. Today the fishermen of Massachusetts are reduced to fishing the hideous hagfish, for which there is a slight market in the Far East, but even their numbers are now falling.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Page 285
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Fish , Sea

“In the first four centuries A. D. the world was full of Gnostics peddling special revelations, and, of course, Christ was only one of the Saviors: others were Baruch, Gamaliel, Tat (= the Egyptian god Toth), Seth (Egyptian god), Balaam, Ezechiel, Adam (whose books had just been discovered), Moses, Enoch, Marsanes, Nicotheus, Phosilampes, Mithra, Zoroaster, Zervan, et al., et al. In the early centuries of our era, the Near East was a Bedlam filled with the insane ravings of fakirs peddling their Saviors and their forged Gospels, and at this distance it is impossible to tell the difference between madmen, hallucinés who got visions of god from eating the sacred mushroom, Amanita muscaria, and shysters fleecing the yokels with mystic gabble. One cannot read much of the gibberish without feeling queasy and dizzy, but for a quick survey of the stuff that our holy men want to sweep under the rug, see Jean Doresse, Les livres secrets des Gnostiques d'Égypte, Paris, 1959, which surveys the books found at Chenoboskion a few years before. The one significant thing is that the peddlers of all forms of Gnosticism (including Christian cults before the Third Century) were almost all Jews. If you will look in your Scientific American for January 1973, pp. 80-87, you will note that the author has to admit that "it becomes increasingly evident that much of Gnosticism is probably of Jewish origin." He is naturally cautious, wary of offending God's Peculiar People. Although I admit that one cannot identify the race of some of the more prominent Salvation-hucksters, I think it significant that those whom one can identify racially always turn out to be Jews, and I would delete "much of" and "probably" in the author's statement.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Men , God , People , Secret

“We are facing someone [Iran] who has an army, money, and a political plan for the Arab Islamic Middle East.”

Walid Jumblatt (1949) Leader of the Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon

Walid Jumblatt: I Apologize to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for Comparing Snakes, Whales and Wild Beasts to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=1394 (February 2007)

Money

“What you need to know is that who I listen to when I need advice on the Middle East is George W. Bush.”

Jeb Bush (1953) American politician, former Governor of Florida

, quoted in [2015-05-07, Jeb: George W. Bush is a top foreign policy adviser, CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/jeb-george-w-bush-adviser/, 2015-05-11]
2015

“That the principles for which these three men stood might be still more firmly established destiny raised up Theodore Roosevelt. To political freedom he strove to add economic freedom. By building the Panama Canal he brought into closer relationship the east and the west and realized the vision that inspired Columbus in his search for a new passage to the Orient.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Address at the Black Hills (1927)

Men , Search , Freedom

“We spent 5 trillion dollars in the Middle East and our country is going to hell. We gotta bring it back. We gotta knock the hell out of ISIS.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, January, Speech at (18 January 2016)

Hell , Country

“They know of no solutions to the paradoxes of the Middle East and Europe, the Far East and Africa except the landing of Marines. Being baffled, and also being very tired of being baffled, they have come to believe that there is no way out—except war—which would remove all the bewildering paradoxes of their tedious and now misguided attempts to construct peace. In place of these paradoxes they prefer the bright, clear problems of war—as they used to be. For they still believe that "winning" means something, although they never tell us what.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

The Causes of World War Three (1960)

War , Peace , Way , Problem

“In the Bible Cain slew Abel and East of Eden he was cast.
You're born into this life paying for the sins of somebody else's past.
Daddy worked his whole life for nothing but the pain.
Now he walks these empty rooms looking for something to blame.
You inherit the sins, you inherit the flames.
Adam raised a Cain.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Adam Raised a Cain"
Song lyrics, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

Life , Pain , Past

“In the east the day was reddening,
When the warriors pass'd;
In the west the night was deadening,
As they looked their last;
As they looked their last on him —
He, their comrade — their commander —
He, the earth's adored —
He, the godlike Alexander!
Who can wield his sword?
As they went their eyes were dim,
The silver-shielded warriors,
The warriors of the world!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1835-3) (Vol.45) Deathbed of Alexander the Great
The Monthly Magazine

World , Night

“Today we are coming to realise that an epoch in history is over…For more than forty years that Iron Curtain remained in place. Few of us expected to see it lifted in our life-time. Yet with great suddenness the impossible has happened. Communism is broken, utterly broken…We do not see this new Soviet Union as an enemy, but as a country groping its way towards freedom. We no longer have to view the world through a prism of East-West relations. The Cold War is over.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the Aspen Institute ("Shaping a New Global Community") (5 August 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108174
Third term as Prime Minister

Life , War , World , Way

“Like the East Side tenement, our house was seldom without the sound of music or laughter or questions being asked or stories being told.”

Harpo Marx (1888–1964) American comedian

book, Harpo Speaks

Music , Question , Laughter , Housing

“Greek historians who accompanied and followed Alexander tell us that before this adventurer led his short-lived raid against the republics on the Punjab and Sindh, only two other foreign invaders had had the courage to cast covetous eyes on India. Queen Semiramis of Babylonia in the 8th Century and Cyrus the Great of Iran in the 6th Century BC attacked India with vast armies but were defeated at the borders and made to flee with very few survivors. Plutarch leaves us in no doubt that Alexander himself had to beat a hasty retreat from the banks of the river Beas which, baffled by the brave resistance from a series of small republics, his armies refused to cross. And his successor in East Asia, Seleucus Nicator, was soon humbled and not only made to cede conquered Indian territory but also pay homage to the Indian emperor by a matrimonial alliance. But the wheel of time turns. The Hindus lost some of their vigour and vitality and vigilance, and neglected the art of warfare which was acquiring new dimensions in neighbouring lands. The Scythians, the Kushanas and the Hunas who stormed in after the disintegration of the Mauryan and the Gupta empires did succeed in conquering and ruling over large parts of northern and western India. This spell of foreign rule, however, was rather short-lived.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Society under Siege (1981, revised 1992)

Art , Courage , Time , Parting

“Our chapter on East Timor was far and away the most important in the two volumes, precisely because the huge ongoing crimes could have so readily been ended. It passed without mention in the doctrinal system - as, indeed, did our detailed review of many other U. S. crimes. In dramatic contrast, a sizable literature has been devoted to our chapter on Cambodia, desperately seeking to discover some error, and with unsupported and unjustifiable claims about our alleged apologetics for Pol Pot. We reviewed those that were even mildly serious in Manufacturing Consent, and there should be no need to do so again.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Preface to the 2014 Edition
After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, with Noam Chomsky, 1979

Error , Literature

“I've always known I wanted to go into acting, but being a very proud teenager I wasn't ready to admit it until I felt like it was going to be possible. I acted in school and I did some short films in Portugal and some Portuguese theater and things like that, [but] obviously there's only so far you can go, so I moved to London and pursued it here. It all fell into place very quickly. I got an agent and from that point on I got very ballsy and said, "I'll get the work with or without you so you better send me to these auditions." Somehow, I got the first one I went for—I think I was so blinded by adrenaline and excitement. She was an East End showgirl. I just winged it. I remember getting to set and realizing that I was the least experienced one. I remember thinking, "Oh my God, what have I done? What have I gotten myself into?"”

Annabelle Wallis (1984) British Actress

It worked; I'm still here.
Discovery: Annabelle Wallis http://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/discovery-annabelle-wallis/ (November 13, 2014)

God , School , Thinking

“I think it is necessary to say that what is basic and what is needed in the Middle East is peace. Peace for Israel is one thing. Peace for the Arab side of that world is another thing. Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land almost can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

68th Annual Convention of the Rabbinical Assembly for Conservative Judaism, March 25, 1968, less than 2 weeks before his death. Source: Martin Luther King's pro-Israel legacy by Allen B. West on February 15, 2014 at AllenBWest.com. http://allenbwest.com/2014/02/martin-luther-kings-pro-israel-legacy/ 2012-01-15 Youtube video Martin Luther King Jr: "Israel... is one of the great outpost of democracy in the world" by Youtube user Israel SDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvr2Cxuh2Wk 2014-06-09 Youtube video Dr. King's pro-Israel Legacy (in 5 minutes) by IBSI - Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dd7pIB0CP0
1960s

World , Peace , Democracy , Thinking

“The truth about the world about us.' 'Truth' is a word used in many different ways - 'You’re not telling the truth.' 'The truth about conditions in Russia.' 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty.' I want to use it here in the sense of what lies behind and outward show. I. et me hasten to explain by giving an example. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. That is what we see; that is the ‘outward show'. In the past the outward show was regarded as the truth. But then a scientist came along to question it and then to announce that the truth was quite different from the appearance: the truth was that the earth revolved and the sun remained still -the outward show was telling a lie. The curious thing about scientific truths like this is that they often seem so useless. It makes no difference to the average man whether the sun moves or the earth moves. He still has to rise at dawn and stop work at dusk. But because a thing is useless it does not mean that it is valueless. Scientists still think it worthwhile to pursue truth. They do not expect that laws of gravitation and relativity are going to make much difference to everyday life, but they think it is a valuable activity to ask their eternal questions about the universe. And so we say that truth - the thing they are looking for—is a value.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, English Literature: A Survey for Students (1958, revised 1974)

Life , Truth , Lie , World

“On the third floor of Manning's Coffee Shop in the Farmer's Market in Seattle confronting the Sound, the windows are opaque with fog. Sitting here in the long deserted room, I feel suspended enveloped by a white silence. Two floors below, the farmers are bending over their long rows of fruit and vegetables; washing and arranging their produce under intense lights shaded by circular green shades. Above, where I sit, the world seems obliterated from all save memory; abstracted without the feeling of being divorced from one’s roots. My eye keeps focusing upon the opaque windows [an equivalent of the picture plane]. Suddenly the vision is disturbed by the shape of a gull floating silently across the width of the window, a line of movement drawn across the picture surface. Then space again. In opposing lines to the gull's flight, the Sound moves northward through the Inland Passage... It is true that trains run daily out of Seattle to points East and South, but my mind takes but little cognizance of this fact. To me Seattle seems pocketed. There is only one way out: Alaska, toward the North! Swerving to the South, there is the Orient, although in San Francisco I feel the Orient rolling in with its tides. My imagination, it would seem, has its own geography.”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

Source: 1950's, In: Reminiscence and Reverie, 1951, pp. 45, 46

World , Way , Feeling , Imagination

“The long-form endings have pushed away the short-form endings completely in the oblique cases. In the last few years, there are attempts in Croatia to bring back again the short forms in the usage. This attempts are the part of the new sociolinguistic politics to bring back the archaic words and forms in the usage and to construct new words, neologisms, in place of customary words - all that with the aim to make the language in the west of the Serbo-Croatian language community as different as possible from the language in the east of the Serbo-Croatian language community. Leaders of the new language politics proclaim as incorrect what was customary, and as correct what was rare, archaic or even did not exist in the usage, and then they carry it out in practice through the control of the media, text-books etc. Such inversion of the criteria for what is correct and what is not correct in the language usage makes the native speakers unsure and frustrated.”

Snježana Kordić (1964) Croatian linguist

[Kordić, Snježana, w:Snježana Kordić, Snježana Kordić, Serbo-Croatian, Languages of the World/Materials 148, Munich & Newcastle, Lincom Europa, 1997, 18, 3-89586-161-8, 37959860]

Books , Communication , Parting

“They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so... but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Interview with James P. Rubin http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/05/16/1029617.aspx (2006)
2000s, 2006

Life , People , Way , Democracy

“The practice of creating chartered joint-stock companies of a modern type seems to have begun at the commencement of the seventeenth century; and the formation of the East India Company is one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, examples. At first, it appears, the 'joint stock' of the company was separately made up for each ship; perhaps for each voyage. But, in the year 1612 the Company made the momentous resolve to have one joint stock for the whole of its affairs, and thus inaugurated a new epoch. The East India Company, or Companies, (for there were two of them), were followed by the Hudson's Bay Company (1670), the existence of which was recognized by statute in 1707, and by the Bank of England and the notorious South Sea Company.”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter XVI, New Forms Of Personal Property, p. 287

Appearance , Sea

“Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom, and never even to have a choice in the matter? I, for one, do not believe it. I believe every person has the ability and the right to be free.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Address to the National Endowment for Democracy (November 2003)

Women , Men , Children , People

“Our difficulty in pursuing a rational foreign policy in the Middle East—or anywhere else—is compounded by the fact that we ourselves, as a nation, seem to be as confused as the Iraqis concerning the possibility of non-tyrannical majority rule. We continue to enjoy the practical benefits of political institutions founded upon the convictions of our Founding Fathers and Lincoln, but there is little belief in God-given natural rights, which are antecedent to government, and which define and limit the purpose of government. Virtually no one prominent today, in the academy, in law, or on government, subscribes to such beliefs. Indeed, the climate of opinion of our intellectual elites is one of violent hostility to any notion of a rational foundation for political morality. We, in short, engaged in telling others to accept the forms of our own political institutions, without any reference to the principles or convictions that give rise to those institutions.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Central Idea (2006)

God , Hostility , Law , Nature

“I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2005
Context: I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.
But if we must engage in a national debate on half-measures: After 9-11, any president who was not spying on people calling phone numbers associated with terrorists should be impeached for being an inept commander in chief.
With a huge gaping hole in lower Manhattan, I'm not sure why we have to keep reminding people, but we are at war. (Perhaps it's because of the media blackout on images of the 9-11 attack. We're not allowed to see those because seeing planes plowing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon might make us feel angry and jingoistic.)
Among the things that war entails are: killing people (sometimes innocent), destroying buildings (sometimes innocent) and spying on people (sometimes innocent).
That is why war is a bad thing. But once a war starts, it is going to be finished one way or another, and I have a preference for it coming out one way rather than the other.

Thinking , Sport

“The prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East — in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)
Context: The prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East — in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man's natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction.
We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe

Religion , Science

“He doesn't care nearly as much about individuals and individual fates as we would like to suppose. But by trying to ally ourselves with the totality of things, we may get into Tao as they say in the East and be part of it, really take part in it, and not just regard ourselves as a kind of miraculous creation and the rest just sort of stage scenery against which we perform.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Judith Grant interview (1999)
Context: I literally never meet anybody who ever talks about God as something other than a kind of big man. I think God is a wondrous spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, but only interested in men as part of a giant creation which is pulsing with life.
People say, when a relative dies: "Oh, how could God have taken her away so young and with so much before her?" God doesn't give a bugger about how young she is. He probably isn't noticing particularly. That's just the way a lot of things happen. A lot gets spilled, you know, in nature. When you look at what's going on out there now, those trees are dropping seeds by literally the hundreds of thousands and millions, and one or two of them may take on. I think that that is the way that God functions. He doesn't care nearly as much about individuals and individual fates as we would like to suppose. But by trying to ally ourselves with the totality of things, we may get into Tao as they say in the East and be part of it, really take part in it, and not just regard ourselves as a kind of miraculous creation and the rest just sort of stage scenery against which we perform.

Fate , Parting

“I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.”

Helen Thomas (1920–2013) American author and journalist

2010-06-04
Veteran White House Reporter Helen Thomas Retires After Israel Remarks
Democracy Now
Pacifica Radio
2010-06-08
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/8/veteran_white_house_reporter_helen_thomas
2010-11-03

Peace , Heart

“Why can't everybody just get along? No reasonably detached person goes to Israel without being reduced in philosophical discourse to the level of Rodney King—or, for that matter, to the level of George Santayana. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," Santayana said, in one of those moments of fatuousness that come to even the most detached of philosophers. It goes double for those who can't remember anything else. And they do get along, after their fashion. Muslims and Christians and Jews have lived together in the Holy Land for centuries—hating one another's guts, cutting one another's throats, and touching off wars of various magnitudes. The whole melodrama of the Middle East would be improved if amnesia were as common here as it is in melodramatic plots.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

"Zion's Vital Signs" in The Atlantic (November 2001) http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2001/11/o_rourke.htm

Hate , War , Fashion , Past

“More and more it is becoming evident that what the West can most readily give to the East is its science and its scientific outlook.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science"
Context: More and more it is becoming evident that what the West can most readily give to the East is its science and its scientific outlook. This is transferable from country to country, and from race to race, wherever there is a rational society.

Science

“You can't cover the Middle East — you can't cover American politics — you can't cover America these days without finding people in one place or another taking exception to what we do. I think it goes with the territory. Keeps me, at least I hope, mindful, always that there's at least one other opinion and sometimes a dozen other opinions. And they all bear accounting for.”

Peter Jennings (1938–2005) News anchor

Larry King Interview (8 September 2003)
Context: I think no matter what we cover, people tend to see what we cover through their own particular political or personal prisms. I always ask people to be specific what they're talking about. You can't cover the Middle East — you can't cover American politics — you can't cover America these days without finding people in one place or another taking exception to what we do. I think it goes with the territory. Keeps me, at least I hope, mindful, always that there's at least one other opinion and sometimes a dozen other opinions. And they all bear accounting for. But not everybody is right you know because somebody says, "well you did X", and you say "well, maybe X is right in some cases".

People , Hope , Thinking

“The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

By the Waters of Babylon (1937)
Context: The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east. It is forbidden to go to any of the Dead Places except to search for metal and then he who touches the metal must be a priest or the son of a priest. Afterwards, both the man and the metal must be purified. These are the rules and the laws; they are well made. It is forbidden to cross the great river and look upon the place that was the Place of the Gods — this is most strictly forbidden. We do not even say its name though we know its name. It is there that spirits live, and demons — it is there that there are the ashes of the Great Burning. These things are forbidden — they have been forbidden since the beginning of time.

“The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Thursday
Context: The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be his neighbor, there is an unsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between him and it.

“The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

Israel's Proclamation of Independence, read on (14 May 1948)
Context: We extend the hand of peace and good-neighborliness to all the States around us and to their people, and we call upon them to cooperate in mutual helpfulness with the independent Jewish nation in its Land. The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.

Effort

“My heart grieves when I think about the situation in the Middle East.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

2000s
Context: My heart grieves when I think about the situation in the Middle East. I've worked very hard on this for two years, and for years before that. But trust is broken down. We have to do everything we can in our power — all of us, the United States, the European Union, any other nation that has the ability to influence the situation in the Middle East — to work with the Palestinians to put in place a leadership that is responsible, with representative institutions of government that will clamp down on terrorism, that will say to its people, "Terrorism is not getting us anywhere. It is not producing what we want: a Palestinian state. It is keeping us away from a Palestinian state."
And we also have to say to our Israeli friends that you have to do more to deal with the humanitarian concerns of the Palestinian people, and you have to understand that a Palestinian state, when it's created, must be a real state, not a phony state that's diced into a thousand different pieces.

Address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (26 January 2003), as quoted in "Secretary of Incoherence" in National Review (27 January 2003) http://article.nationalreview.com/267757/secretary-of-incoherence/mark-r-levin.

Thinking , Heart

“I am for neither West nor East, but for myself considered as a self — one of the millions who inhabit the earth…”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

World Within World (1951)
Context: I am for neither West nor East, but for myself considered as a self — one of the millions who inhabit the earth... If it seems absurd that an individual should set up as a judge between these vast powers, armed with their superhuman instruments of destruction I can reply that the very immensity of the means to destroy proves that judging and being judged does not lie in these forces. For supposing that they achieved their utmost and destroyed our civilization, whoever survived would judge them by a few statements. a few poems, a few témoignages [testimonies] surviving from all the ruins, a few words of those men who saw outside and beyond the means which were used and all the arguments which were marshaled in the service of those means.
Thus I could not escape from myself into some social situation of which my existence was a mere product, and my witnessing a willfully distorting instrument. I had to be myself, choose and not be chosen... But to believe that my individual freedom could gain strength from my seeking to identify myself with the "progressive" forces was different from believing that my life must be an instrument of means decided on by political leaders. I came to see that within the struggle for a juster world, there is a further struggle between the individual who cares for long-term values and those who are willing to use any and every means to gain immediate political ends — even good ends. Within even a good social cause, there is a duty to fight for the pre-eminence of individual conscience. The public is necessary, but the private must not be abolished by it; and the individual must not be swallowed up by the concept of the social man.

“We need to understand that without comprehensive peace in the Middle East, we have no security.”

Mohamed ElBaradei (1942) Egyptian law scholar and diplomat, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Nobel …

Breaking the Cycle (2003)
Context: I think we need to continue working hard on developing a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East... unfortunately things are not going in the right direction right now. We need to understand that without comprehensive peace in the Middle East, we have no security.

Peace , Understanding

“Well it wasn't a formal hanging. It was kind of subtle. I had covered him … his first press conference. He dropped down into the press room and started taking questions and everyone asked about the tax cut and I sort of — Ari Fleischer later told me I blindsided him because I said to him, "Mister President, why don't you respect the wall of separation between church and state?" Well, there's a video of him that is so funny. He jerked back as if he had been hit! I mean both barrels! And he said, "I do respect—" I said, "Well if you did, why would you have a religious office in the White House?" (I'm exaggerating, but anyway) and "you're a secular official." And he said "I am secular." Well, anyway, I got a call from Ari after that. After that there was a formal news conference and I did ask him a Middle East question and it wasn't the question per se. They just don't like my boorishness.”

Helen Thomas (1920–2013) American author and journalist

Phone interview on The Majority Report, 2004-04-02

Jerk , Question , Housing

“If Thucydides were plopped down in the Middle East or East Asia, he would probably recognize … the situation quite quickly.”

Joseph Nye (1937) American political scientist

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 9, A New World Order?, p. 281.

“After the blast of lightning from the east,
The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot Throne;
After the drums of time have rolled and ceased,
And by the bronze west long retreat is blown,
Shall Life renew these bodies?”

Wilfred Owen The End

The End
Context: After the blast of lightning from the east,
The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot Throne;
After the drums of time have rolled and ceased,
And by the bronze west long retreat is blown,
Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth,
All death will he annul, all tears assuage? —
Or fill these void veins full again with youth,
And wash, with an immortal water, age?

Life , Time

“What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood to adolescence and from youth to manhood.”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), VI
Context: What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood to adolescence and from youth to manhood. He loses what had hitherto guided his life and lives without direction, not having found a new standard suitable to his age, and so he invents all sorts of occupations, cares, distractions, and stupefactions to divert his attention from the misery and senselessness of his life. Such a condition may last a long time.

People , Youth , Childhood

“The sign was an eagle. It flew east.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

By the Waters of Babylon (1937)
Context: I went fasting, as is the law. My body hurt but not my heart. When the dawn came, I was out of sight of the village. I prayed and purified myself, waiting for a sign. The sign was an eagle. It flew east.
Sometimes signs are sent by bad spirits. I waited again on the flat rock, fasting, taking no food. I was very still — I could feel the sky above me and the earth beneath. I waited till the sun was beginning to sink. Then three deer passed in the valley going east — they did not mind me or see me. There was a white fawn with them — a very great sign.

“We know where they [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat….”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

Interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News This Week, March 30, 2003
Context: We know where they [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.... I would also add, we saw from the air that there were dozens of trucks that went into that facility after the existence of it became public in the press and they moved things out. They dispersed them and took them away. So there may be nothing left. I don't know that. But it's way too soon to know. The exploitation is just starting.

“The East and the West are not so sharply divided as the alarmists would make us believe.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Kalki : or The Future of Civilization (1929)
Context: The East and the West are not so sharply divided as the alarmists would make us believe. The products of spirit and intelligence, the positive sciences, the engineering techniques, the governmental forms, the legal regulations, the administrative arrangements, and the economic institutions are binding together peoples of varied cultures and bringing them into closer reciprocal contact. The world today is tending to function as one organism.
The outer uniformity has not, however, resulted in an inner unity of mind and spirit. The new nearness into which we are drawn has not meant increasing happiness and diminishing friction, since we are not mentally and spiritually prepared for the meeting. Maxim Gorky relates how, after addressing a peasant audience on the subject of science and the marvels of technical inventions, he was criticized by a peasant spokesman in the following words : "Yes, we are taught to fly in the air like birds, and to swim in the water like the fishes, but how to live on the earth we do not know."
Among the races, religions, and nations which live side by side on the small globe, there is not that sense of fellowship necessary for good life. They rather feel themselves to be antagonistic forces. Though humanity has assumed a uniform outer body, it is still without a single animating spirit. The world is not of one mind. … The provincial cultures of the past and the present have not always been loyal to the true interests of the human race. They stood for racial, religious, and political monopolies, for the supremacy of men over women and of the rich over the poor. Before we can build a stable civilization worthy of humanity as a whole, it is necessary that each historical civilization should become conscious of its limitations and it's unworthiness to become the ideal civilization of the world.

“Was it a breath born in my garden that moved to the east? Or was it a storm that would shake all things to their foundations?
I knew not, but on that day the sunset of His eyes slew the dragon in me, and I became a woman, I became Miriam, Miriam of Mijdel.”

Khalil Gibran book Jesus, The Son of Man

Mary Magdalen: On Meeting Jesus For The First Time
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Context: He stood up and looked at me even as the seasons might look down upon the field, and He smiled. And He said again: "All men love you for themselves. I love you for yourself."
And then He walked away.
But no other man ever walked the way He walked. Was it a breath born in my garden that moved to the east? Or was it a storm that would shake all things to their foundations?
I knew not, but on that day the sunset of His eyes slew the dragon in me, and I became a woman, I became Miriam, Miriam of Mijdel.

“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;”

Rudyard Kipling The Ballad of East and West

The Ballad of East and West (1889).
Other works
Context: Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

God

“They flock together like ants, hurry east and west, run north and south. Some are mighty, some humble. Some are aged, some young. They have places to go, houses to return to. At night they sleep, in the morning get up. But what does all this activity mean? There is no ending to their greed for long life, their grasping for for profit.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

74
Essays in Idleness (1967 Columbia University Press, Trns: Donald Keene)

Life , Age , Sleep , Housing

“Burton had a most vivid way of putting things — especially of the East. He had both a fine imaginative power and a memory richly stored not only from study but from personal experience.”

Bram Stoker book Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving

On a meeting of Richard Francis Burton on 18 September 1886, Vol. 1, p. 230
Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1907)
Context: Burton had a most vivid way of putting things — especially of the East. He had both a fine imaginative power and a memory richly stored not only from study but from personal experience. As he talked, fancy seemed to run riot in its alluring power; and the whole world of thought seemed to flame with gorgeous colour. Burton knew the East. Its brilliant dawns and sunsets; its rich tropic vegetation, and its arid fiery deserts; its cool, dark mosques and temples; its crowded bazaars; its narrow streets; its windows guarded for out-looking and from in-looking eyes; the pride and swagger of its passionate men, and the mysteries of its veiled women; its romances; its beauty; its horrors.

Way , Imagination , Study , Memory

“The thesis of this book is simply that Greek and Hebrew civilisations are parallel structures built upon the same East Mediterranean foundation. …the evidence is so abundant that our problem is one of selection and arrangement.”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Introduction
The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962])

Problem

“There are men of the East, he said,
who are the East.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Anecdote of Men by the Thousand"
Context: There are men of the East, he said,
who are the East.
There are men of a province
who are that province.
There are men of a valley
who are that valley.

Men

“It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest. Back where people were so spread out in western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn't see it so much.
The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are big but the psychic distances between people are small, and here it's reversed.

People , Loneliness

“A real reconciliation of East and West is impossible and inconceivable on the basis of a materialistic Communism, or of a materialistic Capitalism, or indeed of a materialistic Socialism.”

Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) Russian philosopher

Source: Political Testament (1949), p. 80
Context: A real reconciliation of East and West is impossible and inconceivable on the basis of a materialistic Communism, or of a materialistic Capitalism, or indeed of a materialistic Socialism. The third way will neither be "anti-Communist" nor "anti-Capitalist". It will recognize the truth in liberal democracy, and it will equally recognize the truth in Communism. A critique of Communism and Marxism does not entail an enmity towards Soviet Russia, just as a critique of liberal democracy is not entail enmity towards the west. … But the final and most important justification of a "third way" is that there must be a place from which we may boldly testify to, and proclaim, truth, love and justice. No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth.

Communication

“The cataclysmic shift the clerical regime brought to my homeland and the region over 30 years ago was immediate. The destabilization of the Middle East began as soon as the revolutionary regime of Iran established itself and set out to implement its foremost mission: to export its brand of Islamic rule and Revolution beyond Iran’s borders, targeting the Middle East first.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

Iran: Unleashing Her Potential Through Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=465&page=1, Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium, Johns Hopkins University, Oct. 12, 2010.
Speeches, 2010

“There is no doubt in my mind that the advent of Khomeini’s Islamic Republic in 1979, which turned my homeland into the cradle of modern day Islamic radicalism, was instrumental in opening the flood gates for the spread of militant anti-Western Islamic tendencies, not just in the Middle East region, but throughout the Islamic world. Moreover, it turned one of the World’s richest and most strategic countries into a launching pad for spreading state-sponsored terrorism in addition to becoming the Godfather of numerous sub-state entities that are today destabilizing the entire Middle East region.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

Reza Pahlavi of Iran Speech at the University Club, Washington, D.C. http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=427&page=2, Jan. 27, 2010.
Speeches, 2010

World , Country

“President Reagan knew that he would not get behavior change from the Soviet regime unless he seemed serious about changing it. The actual change was a happy byproduct, which spelled the end of the Marxist mystique. East-European youth backpacked their way to the West to tell fellow students about the wide chasm between the deceptive promise of Marxism and its wretched reality. Long lines to take Marxist courses disappeared in Universities, from Buenos Aires to Paris. Similarly, I am convinced once the people bring down the clerical regime, with Iranian journalists, intellectuals and students free to travel, they will have the same shattering impact on the appeal of Islamist theocracy throughout the Moslem world.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

Iran, Regime Change or Behavior Change: A false choice http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=104&page=5, Hudson Institute, Apr. 3, 2007.
Speeches, 2007

People , Youth , World , Way

“A persuasive way of understanding the collapse of Communism in Europe and the Soviet Union is to think of nineteenth- or twentieth-century slum clearance. For in many respects the Soviet Empire was a slum of continental proportions. Beyond the grotesque architectural assertions of an alien ideology, public housing – almost all housing – consisted of anomic and primitive concrete barracks where the smells of cabbage, damp and low-grade tobacco combined. Rivers and lakes were polluted by chemicals, with the Pleisse river in East Germany alternately turning first red then yellow.”

Michael Burleigh (1955) American historian and writer

Source: Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, From the Great War to the War on Terror (2006), p. 415

Housing , Understanding , Communication , Thinking

“As Germany was formerly managed it was a millstone about our necks; as managed now, it is a millstone about the neck of France. When I came in, I found the subsidy to Prussia dictated by Hanover, not by Great Britain. I insisted that national defence and America must stand first, nor would I agree to the German war until every other service had been provided for. I acceded to the plan of a Ministry that wanted vigour and borrowed their majority to carry on their own plan. But I carried it on in my own way, and, though that may have been the wrong way, I offer myself confitentem reum, if I have not thereby annihilated French power in the East and West Indies.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (9 December 1761), quoted in Basil Williams, The Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. Volume II (London: Longmans, 1914), p. 132
1760s

Way , War

“Through its teaching, through the philosophy which it has rendered accessible and intelligible to the modern mind, the West will learn to understand and appreciate the East at its true value. Further, the development of the psychic powers and faculties, the premonitory symptoms of which are already visible in America, will proceed healthily and normally.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book The Key to Theosophy

The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Intelligence , Learning , Understanding

“The Buddha repeatedly discouraged any excessive veneration paid to him personally. He knew that an excess of purely emotional devotion can obstruct or disturb the development of a balanced character, and thus may become a serious obstacle to progress on the path to deliverance. The history of religion has since proved him right, as illustrated by the extravagancies of emotional mysticism in East and West.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

The Vision of Dhamma (1994), "Devotion in Buddhism"

Personality , Religion , History

“So we’re withdrawing troops from the Middle East. GOOD! What’s the War on Terror death count by now, a half-million? How much have we spent, $5 trillion? Five-and-a-half? For that cost, we’ve destabilized the region to the point of abject chaos, inspired millions of Muslims to hate us, and torn up the Geneva Convention and half the Constitution in pursuit of policies like torture, kidnapping, assassination-by-robot and warrantless detention.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

War , Death , Hate

“Welcome to seekers! Welcome to bearers of the Common Weal! Welcome of the East... They will ask: Who gave you the Teaching? Answer: The Mahatma of the East. They will ask: Where does He live? Answer: The abode of the Teacher not only cannot be made known but cannot even be uttered. Your question shows how far you are from the understanding of the Teaching. Even humanly you must realize how wrong your question is. They will ask: When can I be useful? Answer: From this hour unto eternity. ...When should I prepare myself for labor? ...Lose not an hour! ...And when will the call come? ...Even sleep vigilantly. ...How shall I work until this hour? ...Enhancing the quality of labor.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

1
Leaves of Morya’s Garden: Book Two: Illumination (1925)

Sleep , Question , Understanding , Teachers

“Magic is the science of the ancient magi; and the Christian religion, which silenced the counterfeit oracles and put a stop to the illusions of false gods, does, this notwithstanding, revere those mystic kings who came from the East, led by a star, to adore the Saviour of the world in His cradle. They are elevated by tradition to the rank of kings, because magical initiation constitutes a true royalty; because also the great art of the magi is characterised by all adepts as the Royal Art, as the Holy Kingdom — Sanctum Regnum. The star which conducted the pilgrims is the same Burning Star which is met with in all initiations. For alchemists it is the sign of the quintessence, for magicians it is the Great Arcanum, for Kabalists the sacred pentagram.”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Introduction
The History Of Magic (1860)

God , Religion , Silence , Star

“The most striking of all the impressions I have formed since I left London a month ago is of the strength of this African national consciousness. In different places it may take different forms but it is happening everywhere. The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact. Our national policies must take account of it. This means, I would judge, that we must come to terms with it. I sincerely believe that if we cannot do so we may imperil the precarious balance between East and West on which the peace of the world depends.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

Speech to the South African Parliament (3 February 1960), quoted i.a. in "Mr Macmillan's appeal to South Africans", The Times (4 February 1960), p. 15
Prime Minister

Peace , Dependency , Sincerity , World

“I don’t think California is perfect by any means. I’m sure there are a lot of people being oppressed here and not getting a fair shake. But I just feel like maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s the location on the coast with access to all of Asia coming in and the strong immigrant communities here, that makes it different…I feel like in the East Coast, that’s still a thing in certain classes. That said, there are a lot of wealthy people here in California. There’s definitely segregation and classes in Los Angeles…”

Maurene Goo

On how her upbringing in California affected her writing “Maurene Goo on Writing Relatable Characters and her Enduring Love of K Dramas” http://publiclibrariesonline.org/2018/02/goo/ (Public Libraries Online; 2018 Feb 28)

Strong , People , Communication , Perfection

“There is no Schopenhauer anymore who dares to speak openly of the contrast between the humane philosophies of South and East Asia and the barbaric fanaticism taught and practised by Mohammed.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Negationism in India, (1992)

“It will be the Jews who will initially bear the brunt of Islamic fundamentalist hatred. It is therefore utterly ironic that at a time when Jewish institutions and schools in Europe require military protection and many Jews are leaving the continent because of escalating anti-Semitism, we find Jews worldwide at the vanguard promoting a migration movement comprising primarily the bitterest anti-Semitic elements. Even more incredible is the almost universal inclination by Jewish leaders to make analogies between the status of the current Middle East refugees and Jews during the Holocaust.”

Isi Leibler (1934) Jewish activist

2 December 2015 https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Candidly-Speaking-Temper-compassion-toward-Muslim-refugees-with-reality-436099

School , Making love , Time , Universe

“The next hundred years will witness the greatest improvement in moral practice and understanding this world has ever seen. Nothing to compare with it has ever taken place in the evolution of ethics. The twentieth century is going to be a humanitarian century. The twenty-first century will dawn on a very different condition of things from that which we see around us to-day. Men are going to be Brothers, as certainly as the stars rise in the east. The marching and counter-marching going on in the industrial world to-day will end in a new order of society based on Mutualism, in which there will be not only division of labour but division of the products of labour as well. And along with the recognition of human brotherhood will come, is bound to come, the corollary recognition of the brotherhood of all those that feel.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Ethics and Education (1912), The World to Be, p. 147

Understanding , Star , World , Feeling

“It is scarcely possible to calculate the benefits which we might derive from the diffusion of European civilisation among the vast population of the East. It would be, on the most selfish view of the case, far better for us that the people of India were well governed and independent of us, than ill governed and subject to us; that they were ruled by their own kings, but wearing our broadcloth, and working with our cutlery, than that they were performing their salams to English collectors and English magistrates, but were too ignorant to value, or too poor to buy, English manufactures. To trade with civilised men is infinitely more profitable than to govern savages. That would, indeed, be a doting wisdom, which, in order that India might remain a dependency, would make it an useless and costly dependency, which would keep a hundred millions of men from being our customers in order that they might continue to be our slaves.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

"From his Speech in Parliament on the Government of India Bill, 10 July 1833. Quoted from Koenraad Elst, The Argumentative Hindu (2012) Chapter 3

Selfishness , Dependency , People , Making love

“One of my greatest fears was the Witches, for while I had no magical powers at all I soon found out that the Witches were really able to do wonderful things. There were four of them in this country, and they ruled the people who live in the North and South and East and West. Fortunately, the Witches of the North and South were good, and I knew they would do me no harm; but the Witches of the East and West were terribly wicked, and had they not thought I was more powerful than they themselves, they would surely have destroyed me.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

Fear , People , Country

“I have no doubt myself that the reason why Colonel Nasser acted in the way that he did, aggressively, brusquely, suddenly, was precisely because he wanted to raise his prestige in the rest of the Middle East. … He wanted to challenge the West and to win. He wanted to assert his strength. He wanted to make a big impression. Quiet negotiation, discussion around a table about nationalising the Company would not produce this effect. It is all very familiar. It is exactly the same that we encountered from Mussolini and Hitler in those years before the war.”

Hugh Gaitskell (1906–1963) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1956/aug/02/suez-canal#column_1613 in the House of Commons (2 August 1956) after Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal
Leader of the Labour Party

Way , War , Making love

“This is the most ancient of doctrines and is believed in now by more human minds than the number of those who do not hold it. The millions in the East almost all accept it; it was taught by the Greeks; a large number of the Chinese now believe it as their forefathers did before them; the Jews thought it was true, and it has not disappeared from their religion; and Jesus, who is called the founder of Christianity, also believed and taught it. In the early Christian church it was known and taught, and the very best of the fathers of the church believed and promulgated it.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

The Ocean of Theosophy by William Q. Judge (1893), Chapter 8, Of Reincarnation

Religion

“In the East the existence of the invisible helpers has always been recognized, though the names given and the characteristics attributed to them naturally vary in different countries; and even in Europe we have had the old Greek stories of the constant interference of the gods in human affairs, and the Roman legend that Castor and Pollux led the legions of the infant republic in the battle of Lake Regillus. Nor did such a conception die out when the classical period ended, for these stories have their legitimate successors in medieval tales of saints who appeared at critical moments… or of guardian angels who sometimes stepped in and saved a pious traveler from what would otherwise have been certain destruction.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Invisible Helpers (1915), Ch. 1

God , Country , Nature , Angels

“The Middle East — Although the people are being made aware by the new energy, it is being blocked by political attitudes that cling to the past. This blockage is being flushed out in a wave of destruction. Political and religious leaders are confounded by events. But out of this confusion will come an awareness that will strike the people and create in them an aura of expectancy. People will begin looking for direction, guidance and understanding.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Teachings - The Laws of Life (2005)

Past , People , Understanding

“Here we go again! The US sending more troops to Middle East for what will be disastrous war with Iran. To prevent Trump and future presidents from waging war illegally (without Congress approval) we must sign my No More Presidential Wars Act.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

Twitter post https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard, (18 Jun 2019)
Twitter account, June 2019

War , Future

“Tikka Khan was a soldier doing a soldier’s job. He went to East Pakistan with precise orders and came back by precise orders. He did what he was ordered to do, though he wasn’t always in agree ment, and I picked him because I know he’ll follow my orders with the same discipline. And he won’t try to stick his nose in politics. I can’t destroy the whole army, and anyway his bad reputation for the events in Dacca is exaggerated. There’s only one man really responsible for those events—Yahya Khan. Both he and his advisers were so drunk with power and corruption they’d even forgotten the honor of the army. They thought of nothing but acquiring beautiful cars, building beautiful homes, making friends with bankers, and sending money abroad. Yahya Khan wasn’t interested in the government of the country, he was interested in power for its own sake and nothing else. What can you say of a leader who starts drinking as soon as he wakes up and doesn’t stop until he goes to bed? You’ve no idea how painful it was to deal with him. He was really Jack the Ripper.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979) Fourth President and ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Ali Bhutto in Karachi, April 1972

Money , Home , Pain , Drink

“The problem now (after East Timor independence from Indonesia referendum) is that we the East Timorese are without means. We are so dependent, we feel very small and fragile. But I have confidence that this will not last too long. We have hopes that after (United Nations-backed) the transitional period, we can rebuild our country.”

Xanana Gusmão (1946) former President and Prime Minister of East Timor

Xanana Gusmão (2019) cited in: " An interview with "Xanana" Gusmao http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/local/archives/1999/11/13/0000010511" in Taipei Times, 13 November 1999.

Confidence , Dependency , Country , Hope

“You (Israel) do have a peace agreement with Egypt. You do have a peace agreement with Jordan, and some kind of understandings with the Palestinians. But this is not the limit of the scope of where you belong. Israel is a country in the Middle East. Israel is part of this heritage of this whole region historically. So the Jewish people have a place amongst us. So communication needs to be a prerequisite for solving all the dispute. We should talk.”

Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa (1960) Bahraini politician

Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa (2019) cited in: " Bahrain foreign minister: Palestinians made a mistake by boycotting peace conference https://www.axios.com/bahrain-peace-conference-foreign-minister-israel-palestine-8e6f5901-9053-4da8-9690-208a132b7de1.html" in Axios, 27 June 2019.

Peace , Understanding , Country , People

“The people of the South are expected to remain docile while their civilization and culture are destroyed, while their segregation statutes are repealed by Federal action, and while the white race is destroyed under the false guise of another civil-rights bill. We are expected to remain docile while the pure blood of the South is mongrelized by the barter of our heritage by northern politicians in order to secure political favors from Red mongrels in the slums of the cities of the East and West.”

James Eastland (1904–1986) American politician

1940s

Falseness , People

“There is in the Constitution no East, no West, no North, no South, no black, no white, no slave, no slaveholder, but all are citizens who are of American birth.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Should the Negro Enlist in the Union Army? (1863)

Birth

“The Aryans began at Allahabad, conquered and spread out northwest, west and south, and had by YayAti’s time occupied precisely the region known as MadhyadeSa… They expanded afterwards into the Punjab and East Afghanistan, into West India and the northwest Dekhan…”

F. E. Pargiter (1852–1927) British civil servant and orientalist

Ancient Indian Historical Tradition (1962)

Time

“Vasyl was supposed to become my vocal adviser in my future project. For three years Slipak was a soloist at the Grand Opera. He got solo parts, but he also wanted to have concert practice, that is why he chose a sort of freelance. Mind you, when the war in the east of Ukraine broke out, his vocal career was on the rise. Characteristically, Vasyl did not give up his career, he would be active as a volunteer, then he would return from Ukraine to France to give concerts and appear in performances, and then again he would go to Ukraine, which he loved above all. And then again more concerts, and again back to the front.”

Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer

2017
Nicolas Krauze, conductor, the Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle Europe (France). “He loved Ukraine above all”. The Day. Кyiv.ua. - 2017. - 7 March. https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/culture/he-loved-ukraine-above-all

War , Future , Appearance , Love

“The sacred books of the East are the best evidence for the greatness of their authors, for who in later days or in modern times can even approach the spiritual sublimity of their religious thought, the intellectual splendour of their philosophy, the breadth and purity of their ethic? And when we find that these books contain teachings about God, man, and the universe identical in substance under much variety of outer appearance, it does not seem unreasonable to refer to them to a central primary body of doctrine. To that body we give the name Divine Wisdom, in its Greek form: THEOSOPHY.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: The Ageless Wisdom (1897)

God , Time , Universe , Appearance

“In case of a resumption of hostilities we are militarily in a position to reconquer, in the east, the province of Posen and to defend our frontier. In the west, we cannot, in view of the numerical superiority of the Entente and its ability to surround us on both flanks, count on repelling successfully a determined attack of our enemies. A favorable outcome of our operations is therefore very doubtful, but as a soldier I would rather perish in honor than sign a humiliating peace.”

Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and president of Germany

Letter to Friedrich Ebert after the Treaty of Versailles was presented to Germany (17 June 1919), quoted in Andreas Dorpalen, Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic (Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 39 and John W. Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-1945 (London: Macmillan, 1964), p. 52
Chief of the German General Staff

Peace , Hostility

“We must become so strong and must so ruthlessly weaken our opponents that no enemy will ever dare to attack us again. To achieve this a modification of frontiers in the west as in the east is essential.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech at a joint meeting of the National Liberal Party and the National Liberal Central Committee (15 July 1915), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 274
1910s

Strong

“The great scientific contribution in theoretical physics that has come from Japan since the last war may be an indication of a certain relationship between philosophical ideas in the tradition of the Far East and the philosophical substance of quantum theory.”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

Quoted from F. Capra, The Tao of Physics.

War , Idea

“The Indo-Aryan influence, whether due to actual settlement, acculturation, or, if one prefers, the substitution of Indo-Aryan names for local ones, was powerful enough from early on to replace local names, in spite of the well-known conservatism of river-names. This is especially surprising in the area once occupied by the Indus civilization, where one would have expected the survival of earlier names, as has been the case in Europe and the Near East. At the least, one would expect a palimpsest, as found in New England, with the name of the State of Massachussetts next to the Charles River formerly called the Massachussetts River, and such new adaptations as Stony Brook, Muddy Creek, Red River, etc. next to the adaptations of Indian names such as the Mississippi and the Missouri. The failure to preserve old hydronomes even in the Indus Valley (with a few exceptions noted above) indicates the extent of the social and political collapse experienced by the local population.”

Michael Witzel (1943) German-American philologist

p 107
Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres

Failure

“This leads to the conclusion that the Indo-Aryan influence, … was powerful enough from early on to replace local names, in spite of the well-known conservatism of river names. This is especially surprising in the area once occupied by the Indus Civilisation where one would have expected the survival of older names, as has been the case in Europe and the Near East. At the least, one would expect a palimpsest, as found in New England with the name of the state of Massachussetts next to the Charles river, formerly called the Massachussetts river, and such new adaptations as Stony Brook, Muddy Creek, Red River, etc., next to the adaptations of Indian names such as the Mississippi and the Missouri.”

Michael Witzel (1943) German-American philologist

Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres

“Commended, multi-talented and innovative Rahman for bringing East and West closer through music and for making the world look at Indian film music more seriously. Diversity of his styles and themes was appealing to different sections of the society.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

Rajan Zed in “Hollywood calling Rehman”.

World , Making love , Music

“Dominicus Corea had a posthumous son, Lewis Corea who became the Dissawe of Uva. Sir Paul Peiris wrote that `With the disappearance of Dominicus Corea, came a short lull in military operations of which the Portuguese officials availed themselves to give free rein to that rapacity which so frequently disgraced their careers in the East’. Dominicus Corea was succeeded by his brother Simon, as Dissawe of the Sat Korale, Kotte and Sitawaka.”

Dominicus Corea (1565–1596) King of Kotte and Sitawaka

By Deva Corea in his article 'Dominicus Corea of Kotte.' http://vernoncorea.wordpress.com/category/king-dominicus-corea-of-kotte/

“They call him Tui Koro. He has been accepted as the chief of the island of Koro, one of the larger islands in the Koro Sea to the north-east of Viti Levu, but it was not always so.”

Sathi Narain (1919–1989) Fijian politician

Fiji Times, 29 June 1969

Sea

“East? They wouldn’t know the bloody East if they saw it. Not if you was to hand it to them on a plate would they know it was the East. That’s where the East is, there.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

He waved his hand wildly into the black night. 'Out there, west. You wasn’t there, so you wouldn’t know. Now I was. Palestine Police from the end of the war till we packed up. That was the East. You was in India, and that’s not the East any more than this is. So you know nothing about it either. So you needn’t be talking.'
Fiction, Time for a Tiger (1956)