Quotes about western
page 11

Ivan Illich photo

“Silence, according to western and eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people. We could easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for speaking and for thinking, as we are already dependent on machines for moving.”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

Silence is a Commons (1982)
Context: The issue which I propose for discussion should therefore be clear: how to counter the encroachment of new, electronic devices and systems upon commons that are more subtle and more intimate to our being than either grassland or roads — commons that are at least as valuable as silence. Silence, according to western and eastern tradition alike, is necessary for the emergence of persons. It is taken from us by machines that ape people. We could easily be made increasingly dependent on machines for speaking and for thinking, as we are already dependent on machines for moving.

Sri Aurobindo photo

“To the Indian mind the least important part of religion is its dogma; the religious spirit matters, not the theological credo. On the contrary to the Western mind a fixed intellectual belief is the most important part of a cult; it is its core of meaning, it is the thing that distinguishes it from others.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Indian Spirituality and Life (1919)
Context: To the Indian mind the least important part of religion is its dogma; the religious spirit matters, not the theological credo. On the contrary to the Western mind a fixed intellectual belief is the most important part of a cult; it is its core of meaning, it is the thing that distinguishes it from others. For it is its formulated beliefs that make it either a true or a false religion, according as it agrees or does not agree with the credo of its critic. This notion, however foolish and shallow, is a necessary consequence of the Western idea which falsely supposes that intellectual truth is the highest verity and, even, that there is no other. The Indian religious thinker knows that all the highest eternal verities are truths of the spirit. The supreme truths are neither the rigid conclusions of logical reasoning nor the affirmations of credal statement, but fruits of the soul's inner experience. Intellectual truth is only one of the doors to the outer precincts of the temple. And since intellectual truth turned towards the Infinite must be in its very nature many-sided and not narrowly one, the most varying intellectual beliefs can be equally true because they mirror different facets of the Infinite. However separated by intellectual distance, they still form so many side-entrances which admit the mind to some faint ray from a supreme Light. There are no true and false religions, but rather all religions are true in their own way and degree. Each is one of the thousand paths to the One Eternal.

Rollo May photo

“The existential way of understanding human beings has some illustrious progenitors in Western history, such as Socrates in his dialogues, Augustine in his depth-psychological analyses of the self, Pascal in his struggle to find a place for the “heart’s reasons which the reason knows not of.””

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

But it arose specifically just over a hundred years ago in Kierkegaard’s violent protest against the reigning rationalism of his day Hegel’s “totalitarianism of reason,” to use Maritain’s phrase. Kierkegaard proclaimed that Hegel’s identification of abstract truth with reality was an illusion and amounted to trickery. “Truth exists,” wrote Kierkegaard, “only as the individual himself produces it in action.”
Source: The Discovery of Being (1983), p. 49

Polybius photo

“How striking and grand is the spectacle presented by the period with which I purpose to deal, will be most clearly apparent if we set beside and compare with the Roman dominion the most famous empires of the past, those which have formed the chief theme of historians. Those worthy of being thus set beside it and compared are these. The Persians for a certain period possessed a great rule and dominion, but so often as they ventured to overstep the boundaries of Asia they imperilled not only the security of this empire, but their own existence. The Lacedaemonians, after having for many years disputed the hegemony of Greece, at length attained it but to hold it uncontested for scarce twelve years. The Macedonian rule in Europe extended but from the Adriatic region to the Danube, which would appear a quite insignificant portion of the continent. Subsequently, by overthrowing the Persian empire they became supreme in Asia also. But though their empire was now regarded as the greatest geographically and politically that had ever existed, they left the larger part of the inhabited world as yet outside it. For they never even made a single attempt to dispute possession of Sicily, Sardinia, or Libya, and the most warlike nations of Western Europe were, to speak the simple truth, unknown to them. But the Romans have subjected to their rule not portions, but nearly the whole of the world and possess an empire which is not only immeasurably greater than any which preceded it, but need not fear rivalry in the future. In the course of this work it will become more clearly intelligible by what steps this power was acquired, and it will also be seen how many and how great advantages accrue to the student from the systematic treatment of history.”

The Histories

“Everywhere you look — Britain, the States, western Europe — people are sealing themselves into crime-free enclaves.”

"Paula Hamilton"
Cocaine Nights (1996)
Context: Everywhere you look — Britain, the States, western Europe — people are sealing themselves into crime-free enclaves. That's a mistake — a certain level of crime is part of the necessary roughage of life. Total security is a disease of deprivation.

John D. Barrow photo

“Pericles' words are echoed in other critical speeches of later Western history”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian
Context: Pericles' words are echoed in other critical speeches of later Western history... Lincoln at Gettysburg... Churchill's... repeated promise to the British people... of "blood, toil, tears, and sweat." And no wonder, for both orator's knew their Thucydides and knew this speech [Funeral Oration over the Athenian dead in the first year of the Peloponnesian War].... the most obvious later parallel is the 1961 presidential address of John F. Kennedy.... When he told of the sacrifices yet to come, like Pericles he pulled no punches.... In neither case is there a confession of atheism, just an implied acknowledgement that a politician is no oracle and has no business speaking on behalf of heaven.

Terence McKenna photo

“It's strange — you know, the Net is denounced as austere, the product of the engineering mentality, so forth and so on. It's the most feminine influence that Western civilization has ever allowed itself to fall under the spell of.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Technopagans at the End of History (1998)
Context: It's strange — you know, the Net is denounced as austere, the product of the engineering mentality, so forth and so on. It's the most feminine influence that Western civilization has ever allowed itself to fall under the spell of. The troubadors of the fourteenth century were as nothing compared to the boundary-dissolving, feminizing, permitting, nurturing nature of the Net. Maybe that's why there is an overwhelming male preference for it, in its early form, because that's where that was needed. But it is Sophia, it is wisdom, it is the penetrating archetypal female logos of the world-soul, leading us away from what was very sharp-edged and uncomfortable and repressive to our creativity and our sexuality and our relationships to each other and to the Earth.

Alan Watts photo

“While the outward form of the Western world remained Greco-Roman, its content became gradually Judeo-Christian.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian
Context: For the most part, in the union of Greco-Roman with Judeo-Christian, the Greco-Roman turn of mind combined with Judeo-Christian values. While the outward form of the Western world remained Greco-Roman, its content became gradually Judeo-Christian.

Richard Feynman photo

“How can we draw inspiration to support these two pillars of western civilization so that they may stand together in full vigor, mutually unafraid? Is this not the central problem of our time?”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

remarks (2 May 1956) at a Caltech YMCA lunch forum http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/49/2/Religion.htm
Context: Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure — the adventure into the unknown, an unknown which must be recognized as being unknown in order to be explored; the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered; the attitude that all is uncertain; to summarize it — the humility of the intellect. The other great heritage is Christian ethics — the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual — the humility of the spirit.
These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent. But logic is not all; one needs one's heart to follow an idea. If people are going back to religion, what are they going back to? Is the modern church a place to give comfort to a man who doubts God — more, one who disbelieves in God? Is the modern church a place to give comfort and encouragement to the value of such doubts? So far, have we not drawn strength and comfort to maintain the one or the other of these consistent heritages in a way which attacks the values of the other? Is this unavoidable? How can we draw inspiration to support these two pillars of western civilization so that they may stand together in full vigor, mutually unafraid? Is this not the central problem of our time?

Robert M. Sapolsky photo

“Western religions, all the leading religions, have this schizotypalism shot through them from top to bottom.”

Robert M. Sapolsky (1957) American endocrinologist

Emperor Has No Clothes Award acceptance speech (2003)
Context: Western religions, all the leading religions, have this schizotypalism shot through them from top to bottom. It's that same exact principle: it's great having one of these guys, but we sure wouldn't want to have three of them in our tribe. Overdo it, and our schizotypalism in the Western religious setting is what we call a "cult," and there you are in the realm of a Charles Manson or a David Koresh or a Jim Jones. You can only do post-hoc forensic psychiatry on Koresh and Jones, but Charles Manson is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. But get it just right, and people are gonna get the day off from work on your birthday for millennia to come. [laughter] This is great! I think this is the first time I've ever said that line without somebody getting up and leaving in a huff from the audience. It's very nice being here.

Richard Wright photo
Kofi Annan photo

“My friends, our challenge today is not to save Western civilization — or Eastern, for that matter. All civilization is at stake, and we can save it only if all peoples join together in the task.”

Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Truman Library address (2006)
Context: My friends, our challenge today is not to save Western civilization — or Eastern, for that matter. All civilization is at stake, and we can save it only if all peoples join together in the task.
You Americans did so much, in the last century, to build an effective multilateral system, with the United Nations at its heart. Do you need it less today, and does it need you less, than 60 years ago?
Surely not. More than ever today, Americans, like the rest of humanity, need a functioning global system through which the world’s peoples can face global challenges together. And in order to function more effectively, the system still cries out for far-sighted American leadership, in the Truman tradition.
I hope and pray that the American leaders of today, and tomorrow, will provide it.

“The Western search for unifying truth did not come to an end with Christianity, any more than with the physical theories of forty years ago.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

The Universe of Experience: A Worldview Beyond Science and Religion (1974)
Context: Faced by the dire nihilism of our time, we need a greater honesty... The Western search for unifying truth did not come to an end with Christianity, any more than with the physical theories of forty years ago.

“For myself, and I was not alone, all the conscious and recollected years of my life have been lived to this day under the heavy threat of world catastrophe, and most of the energies of my mind and spirit have been spent in the effort to grasp the meaning of those threats, to trace them to their sources and to understand the logic of this majestic and terrible failure of the life of man in the Western world.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

Flowering Judas, Introduction to Modern Library edition (1940)
Context: For myself, and I was not alone, all the conscious and recollected years of my life have been lived to this day under the heavy threat of world catastrophe, and most of the energies of my mind and spirit have been spent in the effort to grasp the meaning of those threats, to trace them to their sources and to understand the logic of this majestic and terrible failure of the life of man in the Western world.
In the face of such shape and weight of present misfortune, the voice of the individual artist may seem perhaps of no more consequence than the whirring of a cricket in the grass, but the arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and the societies, even the very civilization that produced them. They cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away.

J. J. Abrams photo

“Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) is probably the most influential film of my generation. … That movie was the personification of good and evil and the way it opened up the world to space adventure, the way westerns did to our parents' generations, it left an indelible imprint.”

J. J. Abrams (1966) American film and television producer and director

Pirelli interview (2015)
Context: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) is probably the most influential film of my generation. … That movie was the personification of good and evil and the way it opened up the world to space adventure, the way westerns did to our parents' generations, it left an indelible imprint. So, in a way, everything that any of us does is somehow directly or indirectly affected by the experience of seeing those first three films.

Camille Paglia photo

“The book of Genesis is a male declaration of independence from the ancient mother-cults. Its challenge to nature, so sexist to modern ears, marks one of the crucial moments in western history.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 40
Context: The book of Genesis is a male declaration of independence from the ancient mother-cults. Its challenge to nature, so sexist to modern ears, marks one of the crucial moments in western history. Mind can never be free of matter. Only by mind imagining itself free can culture advance. The mother-cults, by reconciling man to nature, entrapped him in matter. Everything great in western civilization has come from struggling against our origins. Genesis is rigid and unjust, but it gave man hope as a man. It remade the world by male dynasty, canceling the power of mothers.

Robert Anton Wilson photo

“Dr Lecter, my candidate for the male archetype of 1951-2000, will never win any Nice Guy awards, I fear, but he symbolizes our age as totally as Bloom symbolized his. Hannibal's wit, erudition, insight into others, artistic sensitivity, scientific knowledge etc. make him almost a walking one man encyclopedia of Western civilization.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

"Previous Thoughts" at rawilson.com
Context: I regard the two major male archetypes in 20th Century literature as Leopold Bloom and Hannibal Lecter. M. D. Bloom, the perpetual victim, the kind and gentle fellow who finishes last, represented an astonishing breakthrough to new levels of realism in the novel, and also symbolized the view of humanity that hardly anybody could deny c. 1900-1950. History, sociology, economics, psychology et al. confirmed Joyce’s view of Everyman as victim. Bloom, exploited and downtrodden by the Brits for being Irish and rejected by many of the Irish for being Jewish, does indeed epiphanize humanity in the first half of the 20th Century. And he remains a nice guy despite everything that happens...
Dr Lecter, my candidate for the male archetype of 1951-2000, will never win any Nice Guy awards, I fear, but he symbolizes our age as totally as Bloom symbolized his. Hannibal's wit, erudition, insight into others, artistic sensitivity, scientific knowledge etc. make him almost a walking one man encyclopedia of Western civilization. As for his "hobbies" as he calls them — well, according to the World Game Institute, since the end of World War II, in which 60,000,000 human beings were murdered by other human beings, 193, 000,000 more humans have been murdered by other humans in brush wars, revolutions, insurrections etc. What better symbol of our age than a serial killer? Hell, can you think of any recent U. S. President who doesn't belong in the Serial Killer Hall of Fame? And their motives make no more sense, and no less sense, than Dr Lecter's Darwinian one-man effort to rid the planet of those he finds outstandingly loutish and uncouth.

John Keats photo

“Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

" On First Looking into Chapman's Homer http://www.bartleby.com/126/24.html"
Poems (1817)
Context: Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne,
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise,
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

William Westmoreland photo

“Yet Giap persisted nevertheless in a big-unit war in which his losses were appalling, as evidenced by his admission to the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci that he had by early 1969 lost half a million men killed. Ruthless disregard for losses is seldom seen as military genius. A Western commander absorbing losses on the scale of Giap's would have hardly lasted in command more than a few weeks.”

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 405.
Context: In the renewed war in South Vietnam beginning in the late 1950s, the considerable success that Giap and the Viet Cong enjoyed was cut short by the introduction of American troops. In the face of American airpower, helicopter mobility, and fire support, there was no way Giap could win on the battlefield. Given the restrictions they had imposed on themselves, neither was there much chance that the Americans and South Vietnamese could win a conventional victory; but so long as American troops were involved, Giap could point to few battlefield successes more spectacular or meaningful than the occasional overrunning of a fire-support base. Yet Giap persisted nevertheless in a big-unit war in which his losses were appalling, as evidenced by his admission to the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci that he had by early 1969 lost half a million men killed. Ruthless disregard for losses is seldom seen as military genius. A Western commander absorbing losses on the scale of Giap's would have hardly lasted in command more than a few weeks.

Samuel P. Huntington photo

“At least at a basic “thin” morality level, some commonalities exist between Asia and the West. In addition, as many have pointed out, whatever the degree to which they divided humankind, the world’s major religions — Western Christianity, Orthodoxy, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism — also share key values in common. If humans are ever to develop a universal civilization, it will emerge gradually through the exploration and expansion of these commonalities.”

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

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 12 : The West, Civilizations, and Civilization, § 2 : The Commonalities Of Civilization, p. 320
Context: At least at a basic “thin” morality level, some commonalities exist between Asia and the West. In addition, as many have pointed out, whatever the degree to which they divided humankind, the world’s major religions — Western Christianity, Orthodoxy, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism — also share key values in common. If humans are ever to develop a universal civilization, it will emerge gradually through the exploration and expansion of these commonalities. Thus, in addition to the abstention rule and the joint mediation rule, the third rule for peace in a multicivilizational world is the commonalities rule: peoples in all civilizations should search for and attempt to expand the values, institutions, and practices they have in common with peoples of other civilizations.
This effort would contribute not only to limiting the clash of civilizations but also to strengthening Civilization in the singular (hereafter capitalized for clarity). The singular Civilization presumably refers to a complex mix of higher levels of morality, religion, learning, art, philosophy, technology, material well-being, and probably other things. These obviously do not necessarily vary together. Yet scholars easily identify highpoints and lowpoints in the level of Civilization in the histories of civilizations. … When civilizations first emerge, their people are usually vigorous, dynamic, brutal, mobile, and expansionist. They are relatively uncivilized. As the civilization evolves it becomes more settled and develops the techniques and skills that make it more Civilized. As the competition among its constituent elements tapers off and a universal state emerges, the civilization reaches its highest level of Civilization, its “golden age,” with a flowering of morality, art, literature, philosophy, technology, and martial, economic, and political competence. As it goes into decay as a civilization, its level of Civilization also declines until it disappears under the onslaught of a different surging civilization with a lower level of Civilization.

John Rhys-Davies photo

“Many do not understand how precarious Western civilisation is and what a joy it is.”

John Rhys-Davies (1944) Welsh actor

As quoted in "Welsh star in race row", by WalesOnline (18 January 2004) http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/welsh-star-in-race-row-2453957
Context: Many do not understand how precarious Western civilisation is and what a joy it is. From it, we get real democracy. From it, we get the sort of intellectual tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely alien to you. I'm burying my career so substantially in these interviews that it's painful. But I think there are some questions that demand honest answers.

Miloš Forman photo

“First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined.”

Miloš Forman (1932–2018) czech-American director, screenwriter, and professor

GWU interview (1997)
Context: First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined. And everything is controlled and everybody is a member of some committee, because then their watchdogs placed in the committees can control everything, what this person says or how this person think, you know. It was... [Sighs] it was just ridiculous.

Carl Sagan photo

“A scientific colleague tells me about a recent trip to the New Guinea highlands where she visited a stone age culture hardly contacted by Western civilization. They were ignorant of wristwatches, soft drinks, and frozen food. But they knew about Apollo 11.”

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 281
Context: A scientific colleague tells me about a recent trip to the New Guinea highlands where she visited a stone age culture hardly contacted by Western civilization. They were ignorant of wristwatches, soft drinks, and frozen food. But they knew about Apollo 11. They knew that humans had walked on the Moon. They knew the names of Armstrong and Aldrin and Collins. They wanted to know who was visiting the Moon these days.

George F. Kennan photo

“If the Western world was really going to make a pretense of a higher moral departure point — of greater sympathy and understanding for the human being as God made him, as expressed not only in himself but in the things he had wrought and cared about — then it had to learn to fight its wars morally as well as militarily, or not fight them at all; for moral principles were a part of its strength.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

Written in regard to the Allied destruction of Hamburg and other German cities, p. 437
Memoirs 1925 - 1950 (1967), Germany
Context: Here, for the first time, I felt an unshakable conviction that no momentary military advantage — even if such could have been calculated to exist — could have justified this stupendous, careless destruction of civilian life and of material values, built up laboriously by human hands over the course of centuries for purposes having nothing to do with war. Least of all could it have been justified by the screaming non sequitur: "They did it to us." And it suddenly appeared to me that in these ruins there was an unanswerable symbolism which we in the West could not afford to ignore. If the Western world was really going to make a pretense of a higher moral departure point — of greater sympathy and understanding for the human being as God made him, as expressed not only in himself but in the things he had wrought and cared about — then it had to learn to fight its wars morally as well as militarily, or not fight them at all; for moral principles were a part of its strength. Shorn of this strength, it was no longer itself; its victories were not real victories; and the best it would accomplish in the long run would be to pull down the temple over its own head. The military would stamp this as naïve; they would say that war is war, that when you're in it you fight with every means you have, or go down in defeat. But if that is the case, then there rests upon Western civilization, bitter as this may be, the obligation to be militarily stronger than its adversaries by a margin sufficient to enable it to dispense with those means which can stave off defeat only at the cost of undermining victory.

Samuel P. Huntington photo

“Cultural and civilizational diversity challenges the Western and particularly American belief in the universal relevance of Western culture.”

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

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 12 : The West, Civilizations, and Civilization, § 2 : The West In The World, p. 310
Context: Cultural and civilizational diversity challenges the Western and particularly American belief in the universal relevance of Western culture. This belief is expressed both descriptively and normatively. Descriptively it holds that peoples in all societies want to adopt Western values, institutions, and practices. If they seem not to have that desire and to be committed to their own traditional cultures, they are victims of a “false consciousness” comparable to that which Marxists found among proletarians who supported capitalism. Normatively the Western universalist belief posits that people throughout the world should embrace Western values, institutions, and culture because they embody the highest, most enlightened, most liberal, most rational, most modern, and most civilized thinking of humankind.
In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous. … The belief that non-Western peoples should adopt Western values, institutions, and culture is immoral because of what would be necessary to bring it about. The almost-universal reach of European power in the late nineteenth century and the global dominance of the United States in the late twentieth century spread much of Western civilization across the world. European globalism, however, is no more. American hegemony is receding if only because it is no longer needed to protect the United States against a Cold War-style Soviet military threat. Culture, as we have argued, follows power. If non-Western societies are once again to be shaped by Western culture, it will happen only as a result of the expansion, deployment, and impact of Western power. Imperialism is the necessary logical consequence of universalism. In addition, as a maturing civilization, the West no longer has the economic or demographic dynamism required to impose its will on other societies and any effort to do so is also contrary to the Western values of self-determination and democracy. As Asian and Muslim civilizations begin more and more to assert the universal relevance of their cultures, Westerners will come to appreciate more and more the connection between universalism and imperialism.

Michel Foucault photo

“One thing is certain: the link between water and madness is deeply rooted in the dream of the Western man.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Part One: 1. Stultifera Navis
History of Madness (1961)
Context: Water and navigation had that role to play. Locked in the ship from which he could not escape, the madman was handed over to the thousand-armed river, to the sea where all paths cross, and the great uncertainty that surrounds all things. A prisoner in the midst of the ultimate freedom, on the most open road of all, chained solidly to the infinite crossroads. He is the Passenger par excellence, the prisoner of the passage. It is not known where he will land, and when he lands, he knows not whence he came. His truth and his home are the barren wasteland between two lands that can never be his own. […] One thing is certain: the link between water and madness is deeply rooted in the dream of the Western man.

Richard Wright photo
Robert Anton Wilson photo

“The Western World has been brainwashed by Aristotle for the last 2,500 years. The unconscious, not quite articulate, belief of most Occidentals is that there is one map which adequately represents reality. By sheer good luck, every Occidental thinks he or she has the map that fits. Guerrilla ontology, to me, involves shaking up that certainty.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

"Robert Anton Wilson: Searching For Cosmic Intelligence" - interview with Jeffrey Elliot (1980) http://www.rawilsonfans.com/articles/Starship.htm
Context: The Western World has been brainwashed by Aristotle for the last 2,500 years. The unconscious, not quite articulate, belief of most Occidentals is that there is one map which adequately represents reality. By sheer good luck, every Occidental thinks he or she has the map that fits. Guerrilla ontology, to me, involves shaking up that certainty. I use what in modern physics is called the "multi-model" approach, which is the idea that there is more than one model to cover a given set of facts. As I've said, novel writing involves learning to think like other people. My novels are written so as to force the reader to see things through different reality grids rather than through a single grid. It's important to abolish the unconscious dogmatism that makes people think their way of looking at reality is the only sane way of viewing the world. My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind. It's only possible to see people when one is able to see the world as others see it. That's what guerrilla ontology is — breaking down this one-model view and giving people a multi-model perspective.

Martin Amis photo

“It now seems that pornography is the leading sex educator in the Western world.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Playboy interview (2003)
Context: It now seems that pornography is the leading sex educator in the Western world. And the idea of having your sexual nature determined by a medallion-in-the-chest-hair artist out in Los Angeles is really humiliating. I'm not talking about me, but I'm talking about my children's contemporaries, kids aged 18. They're getting their sex tips from some charlatan at Wicked Video.

Alex Salmond photo

“The future of the western economies in the coming decades will rest on their capacity to fuel economic growth whilst reducing our impact on the planet.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Strategic objectives of new Government (May 23, 2007)
Context: The future of the western economies in the coming decades will rest on their capacity to fuel economic growth whilst reducing our impact on the planet. Scotland is not just part of that - in truth we are well placed to be a leader. Scotland sits at the heart of one of the wealthiest parts of our planet.

Arnold J. Toynbee photo

“Of the twenty or so civilizations known to modern Western historians, all except our own appear to be dead or moribund, and, when we diagnose each case, in extremis or post mortem, we invariably find that the cause of death has been either War or Class or some combination of the two.”

Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) British historian, author of A Study of History

Civilization on Trial (1948), chapter 2, p. 23.
Context: Of the twenty or so civilizations known to modern Western historians, all except our own appear to be dead or moribund, and, when we diagnose each case, in extremis or post mortem, we invariably find that the cause of death has been either War or Class or some combination of the two. To date, these two plagues have been deadly enough, in partnership, to kill off nineteen out of twenty representatives of this recently evolved species of human society; but, up to now, the deadliness of these scourges has had a saving limit.

“When law was held to come direct from the gods, it required a bold man and a prophet to propose a change in it. Perhaps it is still true that a law-maker ought to be something of a prophet. But if so, we are committed in western lands to the belief that prophetic capacity is widespread: the making of law goes on everywhere merrily and apace.”

William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966) American philosopher

Source: Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926), Ch. I : What is Behind Us?, p. 1.
Context: When law was held to come direct from the gods, it required a bold man and a prophet to propose a change in it. Perhaps it is still true that a law-maker ought to be something of a prophet. But if so, we are committed in western lands to the belief that prophetic capacity is widespread: the making of law goes on everywhere merrily and apace.
In the midst of this vast labor it becomes clear to us that the more we relieve the gods of their burdens, the more we need to know what the gods know, the general principles on which law should be made. And if this knowledge were universal, and were applied in good faith, the law-makers themselves would in turn be relieved! In either case, then, we are bound to keep trying for a systematic grasp of those principles of law which we now possess in vague and fragmentary fashion.

Joel Barlow photo

“The hour is come, the world's unclosing eyes
Discern with rapture where its wisdom lies;
From western heav'ns th' inverted Orient springs,
The morn of man, the dreadful night of kings.”

Joel Barlow (1754–1812) American diplomat

The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)
Context: Once draw the sword; its burning point shall bring
To thy quick nerves a never-ending sting;
The blood they shed thy weight of wo shall swell,
And their grim ghosts for ever with thee dwell. Learn hence, ye tyrants, ere ye learn too late,
Of all your craft th' inevitable fate.
The hour is come, the world's unclosing eyes
Discern with rapture where its wisdom lies;
From western heav'ns th' inverted Orient springs,
The morn of man, the dreadful night of kings.
Dim, like the day-struck owl, ye grope in light,
No arm for combat, no resource in sight;
If on your guards your lingering hopes repose,
Your guards are men, and men you've made your foes;
If to your rocky ramparts ye repair,
De Launay's fate can tell your fortune there.
No turn, no shift, no courtly arts avail,
Each mask is broken, all illusions fail;
Driv'n to your last retreat of shame and fear,
One counsel waits you, one relief is near :
By worth internal, rise to self-wrought fame,
Your equal rank, your human kindred claim;
'Tis Reason's choice, 'tis Wisdom's final plan,
To drop the monarch and assume the man.

Robert M. Pirsig photo

“Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric.”

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: Lightning hits!
Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine "virtue." But aretê. Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric.

Reza Pahlavi photo

“Western classical music, to be sure, is not part of traditional Iranian culture, and yes it’s elitist. But the fact that the Tehran symphony Orchestra and the Roudaki Hall have survived the vagaries of these past three decades is yet another evidence that the forces of darkness, the cult of death, martyrdom and superstition has not conquered the spirit of our nation.”

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

"Peace and Stability in the Middle East and Beyond: A Hostage to Iranian Intransigence and Adventurism." http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=142&page=4, Oct. 24, 2007.
Speeches, 2007

Reza Pahlavi photo
Reza Pahlavi photo
Reza Pahlavi photo
Herbert Read photo
Robert S. Wistrich photo

“The Islamists are the spearhead of current anti-Semitism, aided and abetted by the moral relativism of all too many naïve Western liberals.”

Robert S. Wistrich (1945–2015) historian

as reported by Sam Roberts in "Robert S. Wistrich, Scholar of Anti-Semitism, Dies at 70," New York Times, May 28, 2015 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/world/europe/robert-s-wistrich-scholar-of-anti-semitism-dies-at-70.html

Ana Castillo photo
Brian W. Aldiss photo
Alan Watts photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
Adi Shankara photo
Ibram X. Kendi photo

“The working class in the United States has never been united; it’s always been divided along the lines of race…Racism and capitalism emerged at the same time, in 15th-century western Europe, and they’ve reinforced each other from the beginning.”

Ibram X. Kendi (1982) American author and historian

On the American working class in “Ibram X Kendi on why not being racist is not enough” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/14/ibram-x-kendi-on-why-not-being-racist-is-not-enough in The Guardian (2019 Aug 14)

Koenraad Elst photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Koenraad Elst photo

“As recently also pointed out by Prof. S. N. Balagangadhara and Mr. Rajiv Malhotra, Western Hinduism experts are, with only little hyperbole, the only academic specialists who actively work for their own field of study to die.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Well, I’ll grant you the criminologists.

Elst, Koenraad. The Wikipedia lemma on "Koenraad Elst": a textbook example of defamation (2013) https://koenraadelst.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-wikipedia-lemma-on-koenraad-elst.html
2010s

Koenraad Elst photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo
Wendy Doniger photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa photo
Amiri Baraka photo
C. Wright Mills photo
Michael Foot photo
Daljit Nagra photo

“I didn’t want to write it in OED English…As I was writing more and more I was aware that I was having it filtered through to me from various languages, various religions, various countries, and so in a sense I wanted to present it from this Western, global perspective, to try and capture something multicultural.”

Daljit Nagra (1966) British poet, teacher and broadcaster

On the specific English that he chose for his writings in “Daljit Nagra interview: Yoda-speak and Yorkshire voices” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10402180/Daljit-Nagra-interview-Yoda-speak-and-Yorkshire-voices.html in The Telegraph (2013 Oct 24)

James Forman photo
Michel Foucault photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo
William Quan Judge photo
Alfred Percy Sinnett photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Edward Heath photo
Clement Attlee photo
Jonah Goldberg photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Gustav Stresemann photo

“The question of Belgium must not be detached from the complex of the Western questions as a whole. Belgium is a most valuable pledge in our hands.”

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

Speech in the Reichstag (27 February 1918), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 210
1910s

Sergey Lavrov photo

“What do they mean by insolent remarks that the countries external to the Western Hemisphere are not allowed to have any interests there?… Take a look at the map of the U. S. military bases—the whole world is dotted with red spots and each of them poses rather serious risks.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

Quoted in Common Dreams, Rejecting Demand to Leave Venezuela, Russia's Lavrov Says 'Whole World Dotted' With US Soldiers, Eoin Higgins, https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/04/rejecting-demand-leave-venezuela-russias-lavrov-says-whole-world-dotted-us-soldiers (4 April 2019)

Friedrich Hayek photo

“The treatment of the South Tirolese by the Italians, even before the advent of Fascism worse than anything known until then in modern times in any part of Western or Central Europe, has made the population more unwilling than ever to endure it further.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Protesting against the Allies' decision to hand South Tyrol back to Italy; letter to The Times (22 December 1945), p. 5
1940s–1950s

Baruch Spinoza photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
Imran Khan photo
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy photo

“He was definitely an apologist of Hinduism, a defender of Hindu values and traditions (including the caste system) against the numerous misconceptions and prejudices common among the Western and anglicized-Indian audiences.”

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877–1947) Ceylon-American art historian

Elst, Koenraad (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism. ISBN 978-8185990743

Mohammad Hidayatullah photo

“But many other Indians are cast in that mould, Indians in their basic culture though their high culture is western.”

Mohammad Hidayatullah (1905–1992) 11th Chief Justice of India

Naipaul is sui generis.
Lee Kuan Yew's comment when he received him as Vice President of India, the first Muslim Chief Justice of India in Singapore in 1981
Source: Sunanda K. Datta-Ray Looking East to Look West: Lee Kuan Yew's Mission India http://books.google.co.in/books?id=DFo1yl5AGokC&pg=PA230&lpg=PA230, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009, p. 230.

Dadasaheb Phalke photo

“He produced, directed, processed and did everything to make the first Indian feature film Raja Harishchandra. Unlike most film makers of those days, Phalke did not have the westernized audience in mind. His vision was to use the medium to narrate an Indian story to the audience.”

Dadasaheb Phalke (1870–1944) Indian producer-director-screenwriter

In [Khandekar, Vanita Kohli-, The Indian Media Business, http://books.google.com/books?id=1C4nAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA176, 3 October 2013, SAGE Publications, 978-81-321-1788-9, 176]

Jagadish Chandra Bose photo
Tyagaraja photo
Satyajit Ray photo
Imad Mughniyah photo

“Haaj Imad Mughniyah was martyred brutally and now they are launching a campaign against him. Nowadays they are publishing thousands of article in Western and Arab World media in which this great man is accused of having committed a long list of terrorist acts and other deeds, while he is no longer alive to defend himself.”

Imad Mughniyah (1962–2008) Lebanese militant, head of security for Hezbollah

Ayatollah Rafsanjani, Happiness expressed on Mughniyah's assassination blot on arrogance's reputation - Rafsanjani, Islamic Republic News Agency, 15 February 2008 http://www2.irna.com/en/news/view/line-17/0802151221160447.htm,