Quotes about west
page 11

David Henry Hwang photo

“It seems to me that the biggest challenge for Chinese theater is to cultivate an audience, which would make possible long-running shows. A show that only runs for a few months, tops, fails to generate enough revenue to pay back the investment required to create it. A Chinese Broadway or West End may help to build an audience, but more theaters alone probably will not achieve this goal.”

David Henry Hwang (1957) Playwright

On how to cultivate Chinese theater in the United States in “DAVID HENRY HWANG ON THEATRE, TRUMP, AND ASIAN-AMERICAN IDENTITY” https://thetheatretimes.com/david-henry-hwang-on-theatre-trump-and-asian-american-identity/ in Theatre World (2019 Mar 15)

Baruch Spinoza photo
Adi Shankara photo
Nyanaponika Thera photo
Helena Roerich photo

“In the west, we believe we are the most progressive and socially just, but a lot of that is just a hopeful illusion.”

Barry Lopez (1945) American writer

On the West’s environmental thinking in “'We're living in emergency times': nature writer Barry Lopez's dire warning” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/07/barry-lopez-horizons-environment-climate-change in The Guardian (2019 May 7)

Liu Cixin photo

“Contemporary China is a complex society in transition. The kinds of technological and social changes that took societies in the west centuries to move through have sometimes been experienced by a mere two generations in China. The anxiety of careening out of balance, of being torn by parts moving too fast and too slow, is felt everywhere.”

Liu Cixin (1963) Chinese science fiction writer

On how contemporary China has quickly progressed in “'People hope my book will be China's Star Wars': Liu Cixin on China's exploding sci-fi scene” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/14/liu-cixin-chinese-sci-fi-universal-the-three-body-problem in The Guardian (2016 Dec 14)

Harold Macmillan photo
Ketanji Brown Jackson photo
Fiona Hill (presidential advisor) photo
Fiona Hill (presidential advisor) photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Mikhail Gorbachev photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“The soldiers on the Eastern Front fight far better. The reason they give in so easily in the West is simply the fault of that stupid Geneva convention which promises them good treatment as prisoners. We must scrap the idiotic thing.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Remarks to General Guderian (March 1945), quoted in Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader (1952), p. 427
1940s

Adolf Hitler photo

“Germany is the bulwark of the West against Bolshevism, and, in combating it, will meet terror with terror and violence with violence.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech in Berlin (29 November 1935), quoted in The Times (26 September 1939), p. 9
1930s

Milton Friedman photo

“After the fall of communism, everybody in the world agreed that socialism was a failure. Everybody in the world, more or less, agreed that capitalism was a success. And every capitalist country in the world apparently deduced from that what the West needed was more socialism.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Milton Friedman: The Rise of Socialism is Absurd and There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKhfR8WC4Eo, Grand opening speech at Cato Institutes’ headquarters in Washington, D.C. (May 1993)

Aneurin Bevan photo
Adam West photo
Kwame Nkrumah photo
L. Frank Baum photo
Julius Evola photo

“Christianity is at the root of the evil that has corrupted the West. This is the truth, and it does not admit uncertainty.”

Imperialismo Pagano (1928) · Excerpts http://www.juliusevola.net/excerpts/Tradition_of_the_Mysteries_against_Christianity.html

Hugh Gaitskell photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo
Enoch Powell photo
James Eastland photo
Thierry Baudet photo

“The West suffers from an autoimmune disease. A part of our organism — an important part: our immune system, which ought to protect us — has turned itself against us. At every level, we are being weakened, undermined, and surrendered. Malicious, aggressive elements are led into our social bodies in unheard numbers, and the actual circumstances and consequences are obscured.”

Thierry Baudet (1983) Dutch writer and jurist

Het Westen lijdt aan een auto-immuunziekte. Een deel van ons organisme – een belangrijk deel: ons afweersysteem, datgene wat ons zou moeten beschermen – heeft zich tegen ons gekeerd. Op elk vlak worden we verzwakt, ondermijnd, overgeleverd. Kwaadwillende, agressieve elementen worden ons maatschappelijk lichaam in ongehoorde aantallen binnengeloodst, en de werkelijke toedracht en gevolgen worden verdoezeld.
Thierry Baudet: Westen lijdt aan auto-immuunziekte. https://forumvoordemocratie.nl/actueel/toespraak-thierry-baudet-alv-fvd-2017 Address to the first Forum voor Democratie party congress on 14 January 2017.

Jonah Goldberg photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“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)

David Lloyd George photo
C. L. R. James photo
Hendrik Verwoerd photo
Jeremy Hunt photo

“Thousands of jobs in the West Midlands depend on having a wise prime minister making sensible calls as to how we leave the EU promptly, but also in a way that does not harm business. I am that person.”

Jeremy Hunt (1966) British politician

Tory leadership: Jeremy Hunt says contest is about trust https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48721209 BBC News (21 June 2019)
2019

Paul von Hindenburg photo

“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

Gustav Stresemann photo

“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

Hermann von Keyserling photo
B.K.S. Iyengar photo
B.K.S. Iyengar photo
V. P. Singh photo
A. R. Rahman photo
Sarojini Naidu photo

“The wandering singer has returned home after many conquests in the West…. May she cast over us the same spell that she has cast over the Americans.”

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian politician, governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949

Gandhi after she returned from America quoted in "Sarojini Naidu: An Introduction to Her Life, Work and Poetry", p=64

Ravi Shankar photo

“Without…Yehudi Menuhin, the West may not have found Indian classical music and decades later…thanks to Menuhin’s chance meeting and later lasting friendship with the master sitarist Ravi Shankar, the Wets witnessed the sublimity that the merging of the Western and Indian classical music could produce.”

Ravi Shankar (1920–2012) Indian musician and sitar player

[Wetzel, Richard, The Globalization of Music in History, http://books.google.com/books?id=kjS9PnHJUE4C&pg=PA26, 17 June 2013, Routledge, 978-1-136-62624-1, 26–]

Russell Brand photo
Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo

“Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls' genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs or stones them for falling in love. A culture that protects women's rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)

Orson Welles photo

“We know a little place in the American Far West, where Charlie Briggs chops up the finest prairie-fed beef and tastes…”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

<I>(pauses, and continues with a note of disgust in his voice)</I> This is a lot of <I>shit</I>, you know that! You want one more? One more on the beef?
The Findus Foods "Frozen Peas" Session Out-Takes

Margaret Cho photo
Nigel Farage photo
Noam Chomsky photo

“The Crisis, the civilizational crisis of the West at this point is devastating... it does bring up childhood memories of listening to Hitler raving on the radio to raucous crowds... it makes you wonder if this species is even viable.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Noam Chomsky: Coronavirus - What is at stake? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-N3In2rLI4 | Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) Mar 28, 2020
Quotes 2010s, 2020, Coronavirus - What is at stake?

Bill Withers photo
Enheduanna photo

“Humbling huge mountains as if they were piles of litter, ... She brings about the destruction of the mountain lands from east to west.”

Enheduanna Sumerian priestess and poet

About Inanna, Lines 60-72.
A Hymn to Inana (23rd century BCE)

Robert Spencer photo

“Islamic apologists in the West argue furiously that child marriage has nothing to do with Islam, and that the idea that Muhammad married a child is the invention of greasy Islamophobes. In reality, few things are more abundantly attested in Islamic law than the permissibility of child marriage.”

Robert Spencer (1962) American author and blogger

Frontpage Mag - Hamas-linked CAIR Rep. Arrested for Pedophilia http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/258279/hamas-linked-cair-rep-arrested-pedophilia-robert-spencer (10 June 2015)
2010s

Samuel P. Huntington photo

“The survival of the West depends on Americans reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western societies.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 1: The New Era in World Politics, § 1 : Introduction: Flags And Cultural Identity

Mike Pompeo photo

“What’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s — it was like — we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

Mike Pompeo (1963) 70th United States Secretary of State, former Director of Central Intelligence Agency and former Congressman fro…

Texas A&M University (April 15, 2019)

I Was The CIA Director - We Lied, We Cheated, We Stole, ZeroHedge,Tyler Durden Sun, https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-21/i-was-cia-director-we-lied-we-cheated-we-stole (21 April 2019)
2019

Edward Carson, Baron Carson photo

“Nothing Ireland—north, south, east, and west—has suffered so much in its history as the broken pledges of British statesmen.”

Edward Carson, Baron Carson (1854–1935) Irish politician, barrister and judge

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1918/apr/16/clause-2-power-by-order-in-council-to#column_320 in the House of Commons (16 April 1918). The Irish Nationalist MP John Dillon interrupted: "We are agreed at last on one thing."

Liu Xiao Ling Tong photo

“How could Sun Wukong crush in female monsters? When you want to spoof something, spoof your grandparents rather than Journey to the West!”

Liu Xiao Ling Tong (1959) Chinese actor

(zh-CN) 孙悟空怎么能跟女妖谈恋爱呢?要恶搞,回去恶搞你爷爷奶奶去,别恶搞《西游记》!

Source: [六小龄童:要恶搞,就去恶搞你爷爷奶奶!, http://book.people.com.cn/GB/69360/5535778.html, People's Daily Online, 11 January 2019, 29 March 2007]

Jorge Majfud photo
Henri-Frédéric Amiel photo
João Goulart photo
Annie Besant photo
Willis Allan Ramsey photo
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow photo
Jon Postel photo
David Attenborough photo

“I don't know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, "Why don't you admit that the hummingbird, the butterfly, and the Bird-of-Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?" And I always say, "Well, when you say that, you've also got to think of a little boy sitting on a riverbank, like here, in West Africa, that's got a little worm, a living organism, that's in its eye and boring through its eyeballs and is slowly turning it blind. The creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm."”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate and so therefore [sic] when I make these films, I prefer to show what I know to be the facts, what I know to be true, and then people can deduce what they will from that.
"Sir David Attenborough" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sir-david-attenborough/, interview with Ed Bradley, CBS News (7 November 2002)

Gautama Buddha photo
Ramakrishna photo

“If you want to go east, don't go west.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher
James Doolittle photo

“It was a dangerous area, for certain. There were saloons, prostitutes, everything. The real Wild West. There was no law to speak of; everyone carried weapons, and they used them. Gambling was rampant, and crime increased with the growing population.”

James Doolittle (1896–1993) United States Air Force Medal of Honor recipient

On the memories of his childhood place of Nome, Alaska in an 1993 interview, "The Extraordinary Life Of Aviation Legend Jimmy Doolittle" https://allthatsinteresting.com/jimmy-doolittle

Joachim von Ribbentrop photo

“God protect Germany. God have mercy on my soul. My final wish is that Germany should recover her unity and that, for the sake of peace, there should be an understanding between East and West. I wish peace to the world.”

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946) German general

Last words as quoted in The Execution of Nazi War Criminals (1946) by Kingsbury Smith of the International News Service

Valentin Varennikov photo

“Under Stalin, we were not buying wheat from the West, we were selling it on international markets. We didn’t go around the world asking for humanitarian aid and loans, we were granting them. That is the paradox.”

Valentin Varennikov (1923–2009) Soviet general and russian politician

As quoted in 1995, "Valentin I. Varennikov, Retired Soviet General Who Tried to Topple Gorbachev, Dies at 85" in The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/world/europe/08varennikov.html (8 May 2009)

Henry Morton Stanley photo

“I crossed Africa from East to West and from West to East, and I never saw any excesses committed. I do not think that from this point of view there is a single sovereign living who has done so much for humanity as Leopold II.”

Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) Welsh journalist and explorer

Brief of Henry I. Kowalsky, of the New York bar, attorney and counsellor to Leopold II. https://archive.org/details/briefofhenryikow00kowa/page/28/mode/2up

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Bret Weinstein photo
Max Müller photo
Steven Crowder photo
Mary Harris Jones photo

“When I get to the otherside, I shall tell God Almighty about West Virginia!”

Mary Harris Jones (1837–1930) Irish-born American labor and community organizer

Source: Autobiography of Mother Jones

Robert Lee Scott Jr. photo

“The only time I've ever been moderately successful is in combat was in the bottom of my class at West Point because of a goat mind. And a goat is the bottom of the bottom.”

Robert Lee Scott Jr. (1908–2006) Brigadier General in the United States Air Force

Source: "Gen. Robert L. Scott" in The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2006/03/01/gen-robert-l-scott/b5a0d04e-7d3b-4189-9490-92489a10a78d/ (1 March 2006)

Jeff Fortenberry photo

“The African experience of Church and community has its own dynamics and culture. The particular situation they find themselves in is more trying to fight the assaults on human dignity and human family that are being imposed upon them by the West.”

Jeff Fortenberry (1960) U.S. Representative from Nebraska

Source: Pope to Catholic lawmakers: Be strong. Protect life. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/32545/pope-to-catholic-lawmakers-be-strong-protect-life (31 August 2015)

“No material culture is found to move from west to east across the Indus.”

Jim G. Shaffer (1944) American archaeologist

in the relevant time period
Source: Jim Shaffer. Personal communication (to K. Elst) during the 1996 Indus-Saraswati conference in Atlanta GA., quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate https://web.archive.org/web/20100412074243/http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

Prevale photo

“I walk on the west side of town, | you walk all the other way around, | we meet in the middle of the street, | where we both stop and smile and we both show our shiny teeth.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

from Never Meet – Tarquini & Prevale
Source: Tarquini & Prevale Never Meet https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Tarquini-Prevale/Never-Meet-Tarquini-Prevale-Italo-Mix, Musixmatch.com, July 22, 2017

George Lincoln Rockwell photo

“The color of your skin is your uniform in this ultimate battle for the survival of the West.”

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

undated

W. H. Auden photo

“He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Source: Stop All The Clocks

Sergey Lavrov photo
Vladimir Zhirinovsky photo

“The West will have to choose: either to come to terms with Russians, or to receive a retaliatory blow. This retaliatory blow will not be by means of war. We will resort to the same weapon: nationalism.”

Vladimir Zhirinovsky (1946–2022) Russian politician and political activist

"A Few Minutes with Vladimir Zhirinovsky" in Christian Science Monitor https://www.csmonitor.com/1993/1224/24092.html (24 December 1993)

Vladimir Zhirinovsky photo

“It's better if the West sees us as the enemy and imposes restrictions on us everywhere. Sanctions, sanctions and more sanctions. Then we'll rise up and develop more quickly.”

Vladimir Zhirinovsky (1946–2022) Russian politician and political activist

"Zhirinovsky: 'Europe, you shall tremble!'" in DW News https://www.dw.com/en/zhirinovsky-europe-you-shall-tremble/a-42923191 (11 March 2018)

Dmitry Peskov photo

“The West is an oasis for criminals from Russia.”

Dmitry Peskov (1967) Russian politician

"Песков назвал Запад оазисом для преступников" https://ria.ru/20220403/zapad-1781539233.html (in Russian; "Peskov called the West an oasis for criminals"), interview in RIA Novosti, 3 April 2022
CNN Interview (March 2022)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo

“The liberation of women is like a vast, unfinished house. The west wing is fairly complete….
Go to the east wing, however, and what you find is worse than unfinished.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 15, “Dishonor, Death, and Feminists” (pp. 233-234)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo

“But the more pressing business is what feminists can do to prevent an alien culture of oppression from taking root in the West.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 15, “Dishonor, Death, and Feminists” (p. 231)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo

“I too was ill prepared for the West. The only difference between my relatives and me is that I opened my mind.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 6, “My Cousins” (p. 81)

Noam Chomsky photo

“The pathology of Islamophobia is growing throughout the West — it is taking its most lethal form in India.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quoted in "India has turned Muslims into a 'persecuted minority': Noam Chomsky" https://www.dawn.com/news/1674696, Dawn, February 12, 2022
Quotes 2020s, 2022

Dmitry Peskov photo

“We will never trust the West again.”

Dmitry Peskov (1967) Russian politician

"Russia Says It Will 'never Trust West Again', Fallout Over Ukraine War To Be 'long Crisis'" https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/russia-ukraine-crisis/russia-says-it-will-never-trust-west-again-fallout-over-ukraine-war-to-be-long-crisis-articleshow.html, Republic World, 22 June 2022
CNN Interview (March 2022)