Quotes about western
page 5

“A spectre is haunting Western academia (…), the spectre of the Cartesian subject.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London/New York: Verso, 1999), p. 1.

“We always support peace… and we will keep supporting peace for all people. In Sri Lanka we also fought thirty years of war against terrorists. So the whole development process, the economy went down. We suffered for thirty years but now we have peace for the last four years. In 2009 we managed to eradicate terrorism. Though we have eradicated terrorism, now we have to face the international community, which is pressurizing us. Now our issue is that some of the countries are criticizing though there are no bombs blasting in our country. Every March or every six months in Geneva we are facing a confrontation with these countries. Some of the Western countries are bringing resolutions in the Human Rights Commission.”

Mahinda Rajapaksa (1945) Prime Minister of Sri Lanka

Quoted in DNA-India, "Sri Lankan president Mahindra Rajpaksa seeks more time to deal with the Tamilian issue" http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-sri-lankan-president-mahindra-rajpaksa-seeks-more-time-to-deal-with-the-tamilian-issue-1948078, January 9, 2014.

War, People, Peace, Communication

“I have applied for a pass and I am going to travel through Western Europe for 5 days. [I] start in Cologne and will probably end in Paris. Who cares. In Cologne there is a large exhibition of German painters [especially Die Brücke-artists]. Jan W. [= Jan Wiegers, who knew Kirchner very well since 1920] has been there and animated so much that I'm going there for a while.... it seems that Jan wants to come with me. He was so enthusiastic that I suspect to be able to note him as my traveling companion.”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): Ik heb een pas aangevraagd en ga West-Europa in 5 dagen afreizen. Begin in Keulen en eindig vermoedelijk in Parijs. Wie doet je wat. In Keulen is een groote tentoonstelling van Duitse schilders [met name van Die Brücke]. Jan W. [= nl:Jan Wiegers] is er geweest en animeerde zoodanig dat ik er even heen ga.. ..'t schijnt dat Jan met me mee wil. Hij was zo enthousiast dat ik vermoed hem als reisgezel te kunnen noteren.
Quote van Werkman, in his letter to Cor Spruit, 14 August, 1929; as cited in H. N. Werkman - Leven & Werk - 1882-1945, ed. A. de Vries, J. van der Spek, D. Sijens, M. Jansen; WBooks, Groninger Museum / Stichting Werkman, 2015 (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek), p. 110
After this trip Werkman made a series of prints from the Paris' metro: 'D-67' and 'D-69'
1920's

Travel, Animals

“With hindsight, the Samoa system with appropriate modifications ought to have been adopted. The complete acceptance of western democratic structures, apart from the appointment of Bose Levu Vakaturaga appointees in the Senate, in some respect was in advance of the understanding of democratic principles, particularly in the rural areas.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Our Country at the Crossroads - 2001 Parkinson Memorial Lecture Series, 15 August 2001 http://www.usp.ac.fj/journ/docs/news/wansolnews/wansol1508013.html.

Understanding

“In short, while there can be no doubt about the presence of some Muslims in Sind, Gujarat and on the western coast of India, their number till the end of the tenth century was almost microscopic. In Hindustan proper, east of the river Indus, there were hardly any Musalmans in C. E. 1000.”

K. S. Lal book Indian Muslims: Who Are They

Indian Muslims: Who Are They (1990)

“The Times and the Guardian accuse us of operating a police-state. The BBC Persian programme has made similair allegations, saying that countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia should be denied access to Western military technology. What are the bloody fools on about? Do they seriously regard Iraq, or Algeria, or Libya as liberal regimes?”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 490
Attributed

Fools, Time, Country

“Our free eyes open now on new horizons and can see what yesterday, in our condition as colonial slaves, we could not observe: that “Western Civilization” disguises behind its showy facade a picture of hyenas and jackals … A carnivorous animal that feeds on unarmed peoples.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Address to the United Nations (1964)

People, Animals

“It was as if the whole western mind-training of individual differences had been made background instead of figure, so that you'd look at another human being and say, "Here we are." You'd see differences more as clothing, rather than as core stuff.”

Ram Dass book Be Here Now

Be Here Now (1971)

Training, Clothes

“On balance, the Islamic media's taste for what the West terms sensationalizing and conspiracy mongering is less than meets the eye. Based on my research, it is apparent that the Islamic media's correspondents and editors work harder, dig deeper, and think more than most of their Western counterparts. This is not to say that the Islamic media do not suffer from sensationalized conspiracy theories, but they probably are no more prone to those faults than their Western colleagues.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

Through Our Enemies' Eyes (p. 280)
2000s

Thinking, Suffering

“The Church, the organized expression of the religious life of the past, is one of the most potent institutions and forces in Western civilization. …It cannot help throwing its immense weight on one side or the other. If it tries not to act, it thereby acts; and in any case its choice will be decisive for its own future.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Introduction, p.xii

Life, Decision, Past, Future

“Edward Norman (then Dean of Peterhouse) had attempted to mount a Christian argument for nuclear weapons. The discussion moved on to 'Western values'. Mrs Thatcher said (in effect) that Norman had shown that the Bomb was necessary for the defence of our values. Powell: 'No, we do not fight for values. I would fight for this country even if it had a communist government.' Thatcher (it was just before the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands): ‘Nonsense, Enoch. If I send British troops abroad, it will be to defend our values.' 'No, Prime Minister, values exist in a transcendental realm, beyond space and time. They can neither be fought for, nor destroyed.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Mrs Thatcher looked utterly baffled. She had just been presented with the difference between Toryism and American Republicanism. John Casey, ' The revival of Tory philosophy http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/28511/the-revival-of-tory-philosophy/', The Spectator (17 March 2007) 1980s

Time, Fight, Country

“There will have to be three objects for farming and farm products. First, we must end over-production. The over-production that is taking place in Europe and the United States is damaging and obscenely wasteful. It is damaging to the environment, and it is obviously obscenely wasteful when products that are the result of over-production are being burnt in an attempt to maintain prices…Secondly, we must end export dumping. Instead, we must promote aid and trade policies that encourage self-reliant production, which is more protective of the local economy and less dependent on the economies of western Europe and of the United States…Thirdly, what happens to the political sovereignty of poor countries that do not have the infrastructure that is available in Europe and north America when they are told that, because of the debt crisis, they must open up their economies to multinational capital to do whatever it will, and when the IMF and the World bank tell them that they must cut social expenditure? They are now told that they must pursue free trade policies for farm products. Those policies add up to disaster for poor countries.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/nov/23/general-agreement-on-tariffs-and-trade-1 in the House of Commons (23 November 1990). 1990s

World, Dependency, Country

“There is no foundational mathematical or physical reason the relationship between Pythagorean and tempered western music should exist. It just does. The rich flexibility of the tempered scale and the … bountiful archives of western music are a testimonial to this wonderful coincidence provided by nature.”

Robert J. Marks II (1950) American electrical engineering researcher and intelligent design advocate

"Handbook of Fourier Analysis and Its Applications" (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 623, Robert J. Marks II, 2009, 2011-04-29 http://books.google.com/books?id=Sp7O4bocjPAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Handbook+of+Fourier+Analysis+and+Its+Applications&hl=en&ei=wcm5TaPvJYba0QHYi7nRDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false,

Music, Mathematics, Nature

“The tender Evenlode that makes
Her meadows hush to hear the sound
Of waters mingling in the brakes,
And binds my heart to English ground.A lovely river, all alone,
She lingers in the hills and holds
A hundred little towns of stone,
Forgotten in the western wolds.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

"Dedicatory Ode", stanzas 31–32
Verses (1910)

Love, Water, Heart

“If Ottawa giveth, then Ottawa can taketh away… This is one more reason why Westerners, but Albertans in particular, need to think hard about their future in this country. After sober reflection, Albertans should decide that it is time to seek a new relationship with Canada. …Having hit a wall, the next logical step is not to bang our heads against it. It is to take the bricks and begin building another home – a stronger and much more autonomous Alberta. It is time to look at Quebec and to learn. What Albertans should take from this example is to become "maitres chez nous."”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

National Post, December 8, 2000.
2000

Home, Thinking, Learning, Time

“Now, the United States’ response, the western response to this is a continuation of the appeasement that was started back in the ’50s with Eisenhower when Iran seized western oil companies. The Americans, the British, and the Israelis, as I remember, launched an attack to try to reclaim it and — or at least the British and the Israelis did and Eisenhower vetoed it.”

Leonard Peikoff (1933) Canadian-American philosopher

On Middle East history and American foreign policy, in What do you think of the plan for a mosque in New York City near Ground Zero? (28 June 2010) http://www.peikoff.com/2010/06/28/what-do-you-think-of-the-plan-for-a-mosque-in-new-york-city-near-ground-zero-isnt-it-private-property-and-therefore-protected-by-individual-rights/ - Transcript http://treygivens.com/?p=1738 2010s

“Also, it should be remembered that Count Lamsdorff, the Russian Foreign Minister, declared to the British Ambassador in St Petersburg that his government `took no interest in missionaries' and would not therefore associate itself with other Powers in demanding punishment of those who had attacked missionaries. This deserves to be contrasted with the demand persistently made by the Western Powers for the execution of those against whom they preferred the charges of attacking missionaries.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

“The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free.”

Julian Assange (1971) Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist

Julian Assange answers your questions, The Guardian, December 3, 2010, 2010-12-14 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/dec/03/julian-assange-wikileaks,

Bird, Change

“Swiftly walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave
Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear, —
Swift be thy flight!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

To Night http://www.readprint.com/work-1379/Percy-Bysshe-Shelley (1821), st. 1

Fear, Dreams, Joy, Night

“I have a definite feeling for the West, the vast horizontality of the land, for instance... I have always been very impressed with the plastic qualities of American Indian art. The Indians have the true painter's approach in their capacity to get hold of appropriate images, and in their understanding of what constitutes painterly subject-matter. Their colour is essentially Western, their vision has the basic universality of all real art. Some people find references to American Indian art and calligraphy in parts of my pictures. That wasn't intentional; probably [it] was the result of early memories and enthusiasm.”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

Quote of Pollock, from Twentieth-century American painting, Gail Levin, The Thyssen-Bornemisza collection. London, 1987, p. 267
1940's, Art and Architecture (1944)

People, Art, Feeling, Understanding

“Insulting the hijab is also hardly Islamophobic. Indeed many in the West see the hijab as a symbol of oppression against women, and in opposing it are simply standing up for classical liberal, Western values.”

Raheem Kassam (1986) British journalist and politician

BBC Says Opposing Shariah Law Is ‘Islamophobic’ http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/08/19/bbc-refusing-shariah-law-islamophobia/ (Aug 19, 2016)

Women

“As so often in Indo-Pakistani and Hindu-Muslim comparisons, the argument is reminiscent of the inequality between the contenders in the Cold War: you could demonstrate for disarmament in the West, but to demonstrate for this in the East Bloc (except if it were for unilateral disarmament by the Western “war-mongers”) would have put you in trouble.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Who is a Hindu, (2001)

War

“The question, then, for Western companies, as much as for Western governments, is to decide whose side they are on: the Chinese officials who like to define their culture in a paternalistic, authoritarian way, or the large number of Chinese who have their own ideas about freedom.”

Ian Buruma (1951) Dutch writer and academic

Battling the Information Barbarians China often views the ideas of foreigners, from missionaries in the 17th century to 21st-century Internet entrepreneurs, as subversive imports. The tumultuous history behind the clash with Google. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704878904575031263063242900.html#video%3DA8F64C9A-F513-4C06-8E68-CCB96C2ED70D%26articleTabs%3Darticle

Way, Idea, Question, Freedom

“The process of electing members of Parliament to represent the people is at the heart of western democracy. Fiji courts are also part of an independent judicial system which is firmly rooted in western democracy. The basic civil lesson that our children learn in school is that democracy is a government of the people, by the people, for the people … Mr Qarase should answer whether he wants the western system of governance which allows him to be prime minister or the Fijian tradition which requires the chiefs to rule by virtue of their birthright and rank. Otherwise, he is just being hypocritical to save face. (4 September 2005, reacting to a speech made by Qarase at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association on 29 August, claiming that democracy was alien to Fiji).”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

Miscellaneous quotes

Children, People, School, Democracy

“In Taoist thought, the good life comes spontaneously; but spontaneity is far from simply acting on the impulses that occur to us. In Western traditions such as Romanticism, spontaneity is linked with subjectivity. In Taoism it means acting dispassionately, on the basis of an objective view of the situation at hand. The common man cannot see things objectively, because his mind is clouded by anxiety about achieving his goals. Seeing clearly means not projecting our goals into the world; acting spontaneously means acting according to the needs of the situation. Western moralists will ask what is the purpose of such action, but for Taoists the good life has no purpose. It is like swimming in a whirlpool, responding to the currents as they come and go. 'I enter with the inflow, and emerge with the outflow, follow the Way of the water, and do not impose my selfishness upon it. This is how I stay afloat in it,' says the Chuang-Tzu. In this view, ethics is simply a practical skill, like fishing or swimming. The core of ethics is not choice or conscious awareness, but the knack of knowing what to do. It is a skill that comes with practice and an empty mind.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Vices of Morality: Animal virtues (p. 113)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Life, World, Way, Fish

“We are the richest country in the world. We spend more on health care than any other country. Yet we have the worst health care in the Western world. Come on. We can do better than this.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

As quoted in Sicko is Socko, Richard, Corliss, Time, 19 May 2007 http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1623337,00.html, 2007

Health, World, Country

“The first Bengali with a scientific insight to attack the problems of the language was the poet Rabindranath Tagore; and it is flattering for the votaries of philology, to find in one who is the greatest writer in the language, and a great poet and seer for all time, a keen philologist as well, distinguished alike by an assiduous enquiry into the facts of the language as by a scholarly appreciation of the methods and findings of the modern Western philologist. The work of Rabindranath is in the shape of a few essays (now collected in one volume) on Bengali Phonetics, Bengali Onomatopoetics, and on the Bengali noun, and on other topics, the earliest of which appeared in the early nineties, and some fresh papers appeared only several years ago. These papers may be said to have shown to the Bengali enquiring into the problems of his language the proper lines of approaching them.”

Suniti Kumar Chatterji (1890–1977) Bengali linguist

S.K. Chatterji (1926) in: S.K. Chatterji. " Visva-manah Vak-pati http://books.google.nl/books?id=9x-Peh32rw8C&pg=PA124" in: Rabindranath Tagore: A Centenary. S. Radhakrishnan eds. Sahitya Akademi. 1990. p. 124

Problem, Appearance, Time

“They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.”

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) Scots poet, novelist and literary critic

Sonnet The Odyssey (1879), in Introduction to his translation (with S. H. Butcher) of Homer's Odyssey.

“On December 16th, 1961 the world turned upside down and inside out, and I was born screaming at America. It was the tail end of the American Dream. Just before we lost our innocence irrevocably when the TV eye brought the horror of our lives into our homes for all to see. I was told when I grew up I could be anything I wanted a fireman, a policeman, a doctor, even president it seemed, and for the first time in the history of mankind something new called an astronaut. But like many kids growing up on a steady diet of westerns I always wanted to be the cowboy hero that lone voice in the wilderness fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth, and justice. And in my heart of hearts I still track the remnants of that dream wherever I go in my never ending ride into the setting sun.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Revelations (1993)

Truth, World, Justice, Dreams

“Far in a western brookland
That bred me long ago
The poplars stand and tremble
By pools I used to know.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 52, st. 1.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

“I love Bach, I listened to him for 25 years, all my life, so I never get tired of Bach. And to learn Bach and play it is such a joy, even if no one ever hears it, just to play it sitting alone at home it makes you feel good, it's like a form of meditation. You can play it over and over and never get tired of it, it's a miracle. Bach I think is the greatest of all western musicians. Probably most people come to that conclusion.”

Shawn Lane (1963–2003) American musician

laughs
Richard Hallebeek's interview with Shawn Lane (2001)

Love, Life, People, Feeling

“There are different kinds of justice. Retributive justice is largely Western. The African understanding is far more restorative - not so much to punish as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

As quoted in " Recovering from Apartheid http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1996/11/18/1996_11_18_086_TNY_CARDS_000375852" at The New Yorker (18 November 1996)

Justice, Understanding

“We might add now that we do have an authoritative account of why the United States bombed Serbia in 1999. It comes from Strobe Talbott, now the director of the Brookings Institution, but in 1999 he was in charge of the State Department-Pentagon team that supervised the diplomacy in the affair. He wrote the introduction to a recent book by his Director of Communications, John Norris, which presents the position of the Clinton administration at the time of the bombing. Norris writes that "it was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform - not the plight of Kosovar Albanians - that best explains NATO's war". In brief, they were resisting absorption into the U. S. dominated international socioeconomic system. Talbott adds that thanks to John Norris, anyone interested in the war in Kosovo "will know … how events looked and felt at the time to those of us who were involved" in the war, actually directing it. This authoritative explanation will come as no surprise at all to students of international affairs who are more interested in fact than rhetoric. And it will also come as no surprise, to those familiar with intellectual life, that the attack continues to be hailed as a grand achievement of humanitarian intervention, despite massive Western documentation to the contrary, and now an explicit denial at the highest level; which will change nothing, it's not the way intellectual life works.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk at the Englert Theatre in Iowa, April 10, 2006 http://www.greenteaphd.com/greenteablog/?p=252 Quotes 2000s, 2006

Life, War, Books, Way

“The modern world inherits the Christian view in which salvation is played out in history. In Christian myth human events follow a design known only to God; the history of humankind is an ongoing story of redemption. This is an idea that informs virtually all of western thought – not least when it is intensely hostile to religion. From Christianity onwards, human salvation would be understood (at least in the west) as involving movement through time. All modern philosophies in which history is seen as a process of human emancipation – whether through revolutionary change or incremental improvement – are garbled versions of this Christian narrative, itself a garbled version of the original message of Jesus.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Faith of Puppets: The Revelation of Philip K. Dick (p. 60)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

God, Hostility, World, Religion

“Many people today hold to a Gnostic view of things without realizing the fact. Believing that human beings can be fully understood in the terms of scientific materialism, they reject any idea of free will. But they cannot give up hope of being masters of their destiny. So they have come to believe that science will somehow enable the human mind to escape the limitations that shape its natural condition. Throughout much of the world, and particularly in western countries, the Gnostic faith that knowledge can give humans a freedom no other creature can possess has become the predominant religion.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Faith of Puppets: The Freedom of the Marionette (p. 9)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

People, World, Faith, Religion

“People in many Western countries with troops in Afghanistan may be alarmed to note that, after all the blood and treasure expended there to help that country build a democracy, it continues to vote with Iran in opposing the Western-led effort to denounce the Islamic Republic for – in the words of one of the resolution’s sponsors – a ‘continued deterioration’ in Iran’s human rights record.”

Hillel Neuer Canadian activist

UN Watch quotes for human rights votes today on Iran, Burma, North Korea https://www.unwatch.org/un-watch-quotes-human-rights-votes-today-iran-burma-north-korea/, Jewish Press, November 21, 2011

People, Democracy, Effort, Help

“I didn't start with rock or jazz musicians. It was just my great dear friend whom I miss very much who is no more, Yehudi Menuhin, Lord Yehudi Menuhin. We got very friendly from the year 1952. And when I came to Europe and started performing, we cut three albums in those days, known as "West Meets East." And then I did many other things later on, of course. My student George Harrison, who is like my son, and a great friend of mine, whom I taught sitar initially but later on he was so interested he composed a lot of songs being influenced by our Indian music and Indian spiritual and religious teachings, things like that. And I've done a lot of experimentations, which I don't like to call fusion or trying to mix Indian music or Western music like a cocktail to make it interesting. Genuinely what I wanted to do is have the base as pure as possible Indian music within the framework of raga and tala, and use non-Indian musicians, non-Indian instruments for a special sound, for the range, for the volume, for the colors and all that. And I think some of them came out nice. Of course I was very much criticized also for it…”

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

Ravi Shankar during his talk with Gross.

Music, Color, Thinking

“Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called by the Masai "Ngàje Ngài," the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro," first published in Esquire (August 1936); later published in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938)

God, Mountain, Housing

“Those of us who make a mark use someone else's blood.
Our western stain won't wash away; it won't vanish in the flood.”

Kevin Devine

" The Burning City Smoking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3YmL6Fc3K4," Put Your Ghost to Rest (2006)

“We are not to call for tyranny and bans on freedom. It is obvious that we cannot stop publication of what we view as indecent in our sacred faith…failing to make use of Western freedom of press and other technologies to show the West the values of Islam is intellectual failure and a guilt that should not be linked to Islam.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2000s, Burning embassies is not the way (2008)

Faith, Failure, Freedom

“Sri Aurobindo, for one, insisted on the radically different spirit in Sikhism as compared with Islam: 'Those ways of Indian cult which most resemble a popular form of Theism, are still something more; for they do not exclude, but admit the many aspects of God. (…) The later religious forms which most felt the impress of the Islamic idea, like Nanak's worship of the timeless One, Akla, and the reforming creeds of today, born under the influence of the West, yet draw away from the limitations of western or Semitic monotheism. Irresistibly they turn from these infantile conceptions towards the fathomless truth of Vedanta.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Sri Aurobindo: Foundations of Indian Culture, p.135
2000s, Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)

God, Truth, Way, Idea

“Our experience shows that today the West is commendably eager to encourage the slightest sign of independence within the Soviet bloc. Let's take advantage of their eagerness… We must make cleverness our national trait… Stop showing a sullen, frowning face and clenched fist to the West. Start making it feel compassion for us, and you'll see how fast Western boycotts change into magnanimity. Let's present Romania as a Latin island in the Slavic sea… Our millenia-old traditions of independence are now up against Moscow's political centrism… A pawn between two superpowers.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989) General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party

Source: Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, p. 8 on 22 February 1972

Feeling, Change, Sea

“Western civilization presents one of the most difficult tasks for historical analysis, because it is not yet finished, because we are a part of it and lack perspective, and because it presents considerable variation from our pattern of historical change.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 333-334

Change, Parting

“Aviation has struck a delicately balanced world, a world where stability was already giving way to the pressure of new dynamic forces, a world dominated by a mechanical, materialist, Western European civilization.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

Aviation, Geography, and Race (1939)

World, Way

“Throughout my adult life governments around the Western world have been propagating the gospel of multiculturalism, which tells us that immigrants, from whatever part of the world and whatever way of life, are a welcome part of our “multicultural” society. Differences of language, religion, custom, and attachment don’t matter, they have reassured us, since all can form part of the colorful tapestry of the modern state. Anybody who publicly disagreed with that claim invited the attentions of the thought police, always ready with the charge of racism, and never so scrupulous as to think it a sin to destroy the career of someone, provided he was white, indigenous, and male. To be quite honest, living through this period of organized mendacity has been one of the least agreeable ordeals that we conservatives have had to undergo. Keeping your head down is bad enough; but filling your head with official lies means sacrificing thought as well as freedom.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Multiculturalism, R.I.P." http://spectator.org/38473_multiculturalism-rip/ The American Spectator (December 2010).

Life, World, Religion, Color

“The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity — much less dissent.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Cue the Green God, Ted" (1991).
1990s, A View from the Diner's Club (1991)

World, Country

“About ancient mathematics (whether Greek or Mesopotamian) and medieval mathematics (Western or Oriental), the would-be historian must of necessity confine himself to the description of a comparatively small number of islands accidentally emerging from an ocean of ignorance, and to tenuous conjectural reconstructions of the submerged continents which at one time must have bridged the gaps between them.”

André Weil (1906–1998) French mathematician

Number Theory: An approach through history from Hammurapi to Legendre (Springer, 2006), p. 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=XSV0hDFj3loC&pg=PA3

Mathematics, Time

“It becomes logical to ask where the idea originates that the rules of the game of life ought to be such that those who are weak, disabled or ill should be helped?
One answer is obvious: this is the game typically played in childhood. Every one of us was, at one time, a weak and helpless child, cared for by adults: without such help we would not have survived and become adults.
Another, almost equally obvious answer is that the prescription of a help-giving attitude toward the weak is embodied in the dominant religions of Western man.
Judaism, and especially Christianity, teach these rules by means of parable and prohibition, example and exhortation, and by every other means available to their representatives.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (1961), Chapter 10: The Ethics of Helplessness and Helpfulness.

Life, Religion, Game, Idea

“The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Benway
Naked Lunch (1959)

Thinking, Study, Learning

“The Orestia shows that society is a defense against nature. Everything intelligible -- institutions, objects, persons, ideas -- is the result of Apollonian clarification, adjudication, and action. Western politics, science, psychology and art are creations of arrogant Apollo. Through every century, winning or losing, western mind has struggled to keep nature at bay. The Orestia’s sexist transition from matriarchy to patriarchy records the rebellion every imagination must make against nature. Without that rebellion, we as a species are condemned to regression or stasis. Even rebelling, we cannot get far. But vying with fate is godlike.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 101

Fate, Art, Imagination, Intelligence

“Trotsky was essentially a Western mind. Lenin was a Russian, and unlike most other revolutionary exiles, wherever he went he was a Russian.”

Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) Defected Communist spy

Source: Cold Friday (1964), p. 186

“The real menace, the disease eating away at the heart of Western society, is white ethnomasochism: hatred of one’s own type, one’s own race, one’s own ancestors, one’s own parents, one’s own fellow citizens who do not share a bizarrely unreal and idealistic view of human nature.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

After the Atrocity In Nice http://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/after-the-atrocity-in-nice/, The Unz Review, July 17, 2016.

Disease, Nature, Parent, Heart

“Although it is obvious that people acquire useful skills and knowledge, it is not obvious that these skills and knowledge are a form of capital, that this capital is in substantial part a product of deliberate investment, that it has grown in Western societies at a much faster rate than conventional (nonhuman) capital, and that this growth may well be the most distinctive feature of the economic system.”

Theodore Schultz (1902–1998) American economist

Source: "Investment in human capital," 1961, p. 1

People, Knowledge, Parting

“But what then is this confrontation below the language of reason? Where might this interrogation lead, following not reason in its horizontal becoming, but seeking to retrace in time this constant verticality, which, the length of Western culture, confronts it with what it is not, measuring it with its own extravagance?”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Preface to 1961 edition
History of Madness (1961)

Time

“The erasure of a human subspecies is largely painless — to us — if we know little enough about it. A dead Chinaman is of little import to us whose awareness of things Chinese is bounded by an occasional dish of chow mein. We grieve only for what we know. The erasure of Silphium from western Dane County is no cause for grief if one knows it only as a name in a botany book.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“July: Prairie Birthday”, p. 48.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "May: Back from the Argentine," "June: The Alder Fork," "July: Great Possessions," and "July: Prairie Birthday"

Books, Dead

“Almost all Muslims, including the most enlightened, feel offended by Rushdie's novel or, rather, by reports they have read or heard about it. Very few people have actually read the dense and tortuous book, but they do not have to. The very idea of using the prophet Muhammad as a character in a novel is painful to many Muslims. The entire Islamic system consists of the so-called Hodud, or limits beyond which one should simply not venture. Islam does not recognize unlimited freedom of expression. Call them taboos, if you like, but Islam considers a wide variety of topics as permanently closed. Most Muslims are prepared to be broad-minded about most things but never anything that even remotely touches their faith… To Muslims religion is not just a part of life. It is, in fact, life that is a part of religion. Muslims cannot understand a concept that has no rules, no limits. The Western belief in human rights, which seems to lack limits, is alien to Islamic traditions… The fact that Rushdie propagated his heresy in a book is of especial significance to Muslims. Islam is the religion of the book par excellence.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Few cultures hold the written and printed word in so much awe as Muslims, even though the vast majority are illiterate. When a Muslim wants to clinch an argument he says, 'It is written.'
"Khomeini's Scapegoat", Times, London, (February 13, 1989).

Life, Pain, People, Books

“…a few years back, in the 1980s, in our efforts to bring peace and democracy to the world we assisted the freedom fighters of Afghanistan, and in our infinite wisdom we gave money, technology and training to Bin Laden, and now, this very year, we have declared that Bin Laden was responsible for the bombing in Africa. So what is our response, because we allow our President to pursue war too easily? What was the President's response? Some even say that it might have been for other reasons than for national security reasons. So he goes off and bombs Afghanistan, and he goes off and bombs Sudan, and now the record shows that very likely the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was precisely that, a pharmaceutical plant… As my colleagues know, at the end of this bill I think we get a hint as to why we do not go to Rwanda for humanitarian reasons… I think it has something to do with money, and I think it has something to do with oil… they are asking to set up and check into the funds that Saddam Hussein owes to the west. Who is owed? They do not owe me any money. But I will bet my colleagues there is a lot of banks in New York who are owed a lot of money, and this is one of the goals…
Dana Rohrabacher: This resolution is exactly the right formula… Support democracy. Oppose tyranny. Oppose aggression and repression… We should strengthen the victims so they can defend themselves. These things are totally consistent with America's philosophy, and it is a pragmatic approach as well… Our support for the Mujahedin collapsed the Soviet Union. Yes, there was a price to pay, because after the Soviet Union collapsed, we walked away, and we did not support those elements in the Mujahedin who were somewhat in favor of the freedom and western values. With those people who oppose this effort of pro democracy foreign policy, a pro freedom foreign policy rather than isolation foreign policy, they would have had us stay out of that war in Afghanistan. They would never have had us confronting Soviet aggression in different parts of the world… Mr. Speaker, the gentleman does not think it is proper for us to offer those people who are struggling for freedoms in Iraq against their dictatorship a helping hand?
Ron Paul: Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think it would be absolutely proper to do that, as long as it came out of the gentleman's wallet and we did not extract it from somebody in this country, a taxpayer at the point of a gun and say, look, bin Laden is a great guy. I want more of your money. That is what we did in the 1980s. That is what the Congress did. They went to the taxpayers, they put a gun to their head, and said, you pay up, because we think bin Laden is a freedom fighter.
Dana Rohrabacher: Well, if the gentleman will further yield, it was just not handled correctly.
Ron Paul: Mr. Speaker, again reclaiming my time, the policy is flawed. The policy is flawed.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Debate on the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, October 5, 1998 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec98/cr100598.htm 1990s

Wisdom, Money, War, People

“There are four ways through which a nation's population can vanish: 1. Through obliteration in war; 2. Through their lands being swamped by labor-driven immigration; 3. Through physical mixing with newcomers; and 4. The second and third factors above combined with a decreasing birth rate amongst the original population. Ancient Rome vanished because of the last three factors: now exactly the same scenario is being played out in Western Europe, North America and Australia. Unless checked, the demographic trends show conclusively that Whites will be a minority in all three of these continents by the year 2100. After that, it is only then a question of time and Whites as a racial group will vanish completely.”

Arthur Kemp (1962) British writer

March of the Titans: A History of the White Race http://www.white-history.com/peril.htm Quotes from other works:

War, Way, Birth, Question

“I am one of what must be an increasing number who find the portentous moralisings of A. Solzhenitsyn a bore and an irritation. Scarcely any aspect of life in the countries where he passes his voluntary exile has failed to incur his pessimistic censure. Coming from Russia, where freedom of the press has been not so much unknown as uncomprehended since long before the Revolution, he is shocked to discover that a free press disseminated all kinds of false, partial and invented information and that journalists contradict themselves from one day to the next without shame and without apology. Only a Russian would find all that surprising, or fail to understand that freedom which is not misused is not freedom at all.

Like all travellers he misunderstands what he observes. It simply is not true that ‘within the Western countries the press has become more powerful than the legislative power, the executive and the judiciary’. The British electorate regularly disprove this by electing governments in the teeth of the hostility and misrepresentation of virtually the whole of the press. Our modern Munchhausen has, however, found a more remarkable mare’s nest still: he has discovered the ‘false slogan, characteristic of a false era, that everyone is entitled to know everything’. Excited by this discovery he announces a novel and profound moral principle, a new addendum to the catalogue of human rights. ‘People,’ he says, ‘have a right not to know, and it is a more valuable one.’ Not merely morality but theology illuminates the theme: people have, say Solzhenitsyn, ‘the right not to have their divine souls’ burdened with ‘the excessive flow of information’.

Just so. Whatever may be the case in Russia, we in the degenerate West can switch off the radio or television, or not buy a newspaper, or not read such parts of it as we do not wish to. I can assure Solzhenitsyn that the method works admirably, ‘right’ or ‘no right’. I know, because I have applied it with complete success to his own speeches and writings.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Letter in answer to Solzhenitsyn's Harvard statement (21 June 1978), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew, 1991), p. 577
1970s

Life, Hostility, People, Travel

“The system of production developed in Russia is State socialism. It is organized production, with the State as universal employer, master of the entire production apparatus. The workers are master of the means of production no more than under Western capitalism. They receive their wages and are exploited by the State as the only mammoth capitalist. So the name State capitalism can be applied with precisely the same meaning. The entirety of the ruling and leading bureaucracy of officials is the actual owner of the factories, the possessing class.”

Antonie Pannekoek (1873–1960) Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist

Workers Councils (1947), Section 2.5

Universe

“We consider it a great crime to work against the Western and Christian style of life: it is not just the bomber but the ideologist who is the danger.”

Jorge Rafael Videla (1925–2013) Argentinian President

As quoted in Christopher Hitchens (2010), Hitch-22: A Memoir, (Atlantic Books).

Life

“A far smaller proportion of the population is in jail in Japan than in any Western country - around a twentieth of that in the United States. Evidently the Japanese have yet to embrace Western values.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: 'Western Values' (p.180)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Country

“[T]he view that anti-Communism equals Fascism remained obligatory in countries subject to Communist censorship until the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost. It was prevalent also in foreign ‘progressive’ circles. Western scholars who had the temerity to link Mussolini or Hitler with Communism in any way or to depict their regimes as genuine mass movements risked verbal or other forms of harassment.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 241

Way, Communication, Country

“I fall into the category of Weird West, but I think it may be more of a “Down West” as I’d like to call it, for its sense of macabre western humor.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

interview with Lorin Morgan-Richards by Laura LaVelle of Newswhistle (28 November 2017).

Thinking, Sense

“If you have a message, call western union.”

Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) American film producer (1879-1974).

The popular attribution to Goldwyn is false according to his biographer in A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn: A Biography (1998). The earliest known print attribution is to Moss Hart in Van Wert (Ohio) Times Bulletin (26 August 1954) as cited in Fred Shapiro, The Yale Book of Quotations (2006). Also attributed to Humphrey Bogart in Stephen Humphrey Bogart, Bogart: In Search of My Father (1995), and to Ernest Hemingway in James R. Mellow, Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences (1992).
Misattributed

“Modernization means Westernization.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 239

“I wouldn't say when you've seen one Western you've seen the lot; but when you've seen the lot you get the feeling you've seen one.”

Katharine Whitehorn (1928) British writer

Decoding the West, from Sunday Best (1976)

Feeling

“[T]hough religious thinkers will fight fiercely to show its standpoint to be the one religion really sanctions, each religion has signposts pointing in both ways. One the one hand towards a fundamentalist, authoritarian strain that insists if you want to be faithful you have to crucify your intellect; that is to believe just because your belief is absurd. And on the other hand, each of the three western religions has a rationalist tradition… far from viewing our capacity for reason as threatening our capacity to obey god, this tradition sees thinking as its very fulfillment. There are actually some wonderful Jewish parables, which show God laughing with pleasure as human beings defeat him with a particularly good argument. That is, god would rather be impressed than right on certain Jewish rationalist traditions. So if reason is God’s gift then he meant us to use it even against him if he is wrong or hasty. On this tradition our ability to make sense of the world whether with science or through the right moral actions, is just one more proof of gods goodness.”

Susan Neiman (1955) American academic

Beyond Belief conference (November 2006)

God, Pleasure, World, Faith

“Animals are so easily overlooked, their interests so easily brushed aside. Whenever we humans enter their world, from our farms to the local animal shelter to the African savanna, we enter as lords of the earth bearing strange powers of terror and mercy alike.
Dominion, as we call this power in the Western tradition, today requires our concentrated moral consideration …”

Matthew Scully (1959) American political writer and speechwriter

Dominion (2002)

World, Animals

“Even in the greatest Westerns, the woman is imposed on the action, as a star, and is generally destined to be “had” by the male lead. But she does not exist as a woman. If you cut her out of the film, in a version which you can imagine, the film becomes much better. In the desert, the essential problem was to survive. Women were an obstacle to survival! Usually, the woman not only holds up the story, but she has no real character, no reality. She is a symbol. She is there without having any reason to be there, simply because one must have a woman, and because the hero must prove, in some way or another, that he has "sex-appeal."”

Sergio Leone (1929–1989) Italian film director, screenwriter and producer

Christopher Frayling, Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone (1981), p. 129. Quoted in The Worlding Project: Doing Cultural Studies in the Era of Globalization (2007), ed. R. Wilson, ‎C. L. Connery, Ch. 6: "'But I Did Not Shoot the Deputy': Dubbing the Yankee Frontier" by Louis Chude-Sokei, pp. 158–159, as well as in The A to Z of Westerns in Cinema (2009) by Paul Varner, p. 198, and in The Quick, the Dead and the Revived: The Many Lives of the Western Film (2016) by Joseph Maddrey, p. 104.

Women, Sex, Way, Imagination

“A certain neoorientalism has crept upon us, partly in reaction to the failed militarism of the neo-conservative years, but mainly attributable to historical self-critical attitudes towards the British Empire. This neo-orientalism interprets liberalism as a Western construct ill-fitting to non-Western cultures. Struggling, dissenting liberals within minority community contexts find that they have no greater enemy than these neo-orientalists who lend credence to the idea that they are somehow an inauthentic expression of their ‘native’ culture.”

Maajid Nawaz (1977) British activist

Source: On Blasphemy (2015), p. 1

Communication, Idea

“Thus we have the spectacle, still to be seen today, of the western rancher who accepts federal aid for his cattle operations and federal aid for his grazing requirements, but bitterly opposes all social programs that do not concern him, and the philosophy that lies behind them.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter III : The Failure Of Reform, p. 55

“A major problem is the characterization of the government in Seoul as liberal, as if it were no less committed to constitutional values and opposed to totalitarianism than the West German social democrats were in the Cold War. This makes Westerners think, "North Korea can't take over the South without a war, but it knows it can’t win one, therefore it must now be arming only to protect itself."”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with The Conversation (September 2017)

War, Problem, Thinking

“About the hill lay other islands small,
Where other rocks, crags, cliffs, and mountains stood,
The Isles Fortunate these elder time did call,
To which high Heaven they reigned so kind and good,
And of his blessings rich so liberal,
That without tillage earth gives corn for food,
And grapes that swell with sweet and precious wine
There without pruning yields the fertile vine.The olive fat there ever buds and flowers,
The honey-drops from hollow oaks distil,
The falling brook her silver streams downpours
With gentle murmur from their native hill,
The western blast tempereth with dews and showers
The sunny rays, lest heat the blossoms kill,
The fields Elysian, as fond heathen sain,
Were there, where souls of men in bliss remain.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Ecco altre isole insieme, altre pendíci
Scoprian alfin men erte ed elevate.
Ed eran queste l'isole felici;
Così le nominò la prisca etate,
A cui tanto stimava i Cieli amici,
Che credea volontarie, e non arate
Quì partorir le terre, e in più graditi
Frutti, non culte, germogliar le viti.Quì non fallaci mai fiorir gli olivi,
E 'l mel dicea stillar dall'elci cave:
E scender giù da lor montagne i rivi
Con acque dolci, e mormorio soave:
E zefiri e rugiade i raggj estivi
Temprarvi sì, che nullo ardor v'è grave:
E quì gli Elisj campi, e le famose
Stanze delle beate anime pose.
Canto XV, stanzas 35–36 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Men, Food, Soul, Mountain

“A recurring theme in western journalism, academia, and collectivist politics is the quaint notion that firearms are intrinsically evil. That is, that they have a will of their own, that somehow inspires their owners to murder and mayhem. I liken this nonsensical belief to voodoo.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Source: Tools For Survival (2009), p. 149

Evil

“There are almost half a million Americans behind bars today for breaking a drug law. The United States incarcerates more people for drug law violations than Western Europe incarcerates for everything, and they have more people than we do. There were 50,000 people behind bars on drug charges in America in 1980; now we have almost a tenfold increase. Yet extraordinarily few politicians are talking about that.”

Ethan Nadelmann (1957) American writer; campaigner for the legalization of marijuana

CNN Chat Transcript http://www.cnn.com/chat/transcripts/2000/8/1/nadelmann/ on August 1, 2000. The War on Drugs

People, Law

“The British arrived with no intention of conquest: the East India Company had set up trading posts on the western seaboard, and its officers were called on by the native sultans to help with the putting down of rapacious river barons. The parallel with India is exact, and Stamford Raffles is a perfect analogue of Robert Clive. First came trade, then the amateur protective army, finally the flag….”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Help, Perfection

“The vast material resources of Oregon furnish a solid and enduring basis for the spirit of enterprise that animates our people, and for that wonderful superstructure of vigorous and thrifty statehood which we are rearing here on this western shore of the continent.”

Stephen F. Chadwick (1825–1895) American politician

Stephen F. Chadwick (1878). Governor Stephen F. Chadwick - Biennial Message, 1878 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/Recordpdf/6777836. Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State. Source: Biennial Message of Gov. S. F. Chadwick, to the Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon Tenth Regular Session-1878 329 Governor’s Message.

People, Animals

“Western Science, in its present form, is toxic. It must be infused with love and humility, and an ethical code of honor to renounce any experiment or procedure that causes harm to the environment.”

Krishna Kant Shukla (1959) Indian Classical musician

Love, Science

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

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Decolonizing the Hindu Mind (2001)

Idea, Effort

“People rag on western medicine a lot for its disregard of indirect causalities and holism, for its antisceptic deconstructivism, for its blindness to things like the union of mind and body, and for its proclivity for post-facto treatment…But these criticisms notwithstanding, modern medicine is the accumulation of years and years of human effort to taxonomically observe, understand and explain an enormous set of conditions within a massively complex, underspecified system. To me, this is impressive. Also, they use cool phrases like "the radiolucent lungs" and "ligamentous laxity."”

Nat Friedman (1977) American computer programmer

2002-09-27, 2006-08-22, September 27, 2002 blog entry http://www.nat.org/2002/september/#27-September-2002,

People, Understanding, Effort

“…increasing remoteness of desires from needs. …increasing confusion between means and ends. The ends are human needs… Instead they want the means they have been brainwashed to accept… Never was any society in human history as rich and as powerful as Western Civilization and the United States, and it is not a happy society.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

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

History, Happiness

“On the need to respond to the crisis in Greece, and broaching the subject of the Truman Doctrine ("it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.") with Congress: "In the past eighteen months, I said, Soviet pressure on the Straits, on Iran, and on northern Greece had brought the Balkans to the point where a highly possible Soviet breakthrough might open three continents to Soviet penetration. Like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the east. It would also carry infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe through Italy and France, already threatened by the strongest domestic Communist parties in Western Europe. The Soviet Union was playing one of the greatest gambles in history at minimal cost. It did not need to will all the possibilities. Even one or two offered immense gains. We and we alone were in a position to break up the play. These were the stakes that British withdrawal from the eastern Mediterranean offered to an eager and ruthless opponent."”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), Truman Doctrine, Cold War

People, History, Support, Past

“The consolidation of State capitalism in Russia itself was the determining basis for the character of the Communist Party. Whilst in its foreign propaganda it continued to speak of communism and world revolution, decried capitalism, called upon the workers to join in the fight for freedom, the workers in Russia were a subjected and exploited class, living mostly in miserable working conditions, under a strong and oppressive dictatorial rule, without freedom of speech, of press, of association, more strongly enslaved than their brethren under Western capitalism. Thus an inherent falsehood must pervade politics and teachings of that party. … The doctrine it taught under the name of Marxism was not the theory of the overthrow of highly developed capitalism by a highly developed working class, but its caricature. … The Communist Party did not intend to make the workers independent fighters capable by their force of insight themselves to build their new world, but to make them obedient followers ready to put the party into power.”

Antonie Pannekoek (1873–1960) Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist

Workers Councils (1947), Section 2.5

World, Communication, Freedom, Strong

“The fourth phase which commenced with the coming of independence proved a boon for Christianity. The Christian right to convert Hindus was incorporated in the Constitution. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who dominated the scene for 17 long years, promoted every anti-Hindu ideology and movement behind the smokescreen of a counterfeit secularism. The regimes that followed continued to raise the spectre of ‘Hindu communalism’ as the most frightening phenomenon. Christian missionaries could now denounce as a Hindu communalist and chauvinist, even as a Hindu Nazi, any one who raised the slightest objection to their means and methods. All sorts of ‘secularists’ came forward to join the chorus. New theologies of Fulfilment, Indigenisation, Liberation, and Dialogue were evolved and put into action. The missionary apparatus multiplied fast and became pervasive. Christianity had never had it so good in the whole of its history in India. It now stood recognized as ‘an ancient Indian religion’ with every right to extend its field of operation and expand its flock. The only rift in the lute was K. M. Panikkar’s book, Asia and Western Dominance, published from London in 1953, the Niyogi Committee Report published by the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 1956, and Om Prakash Tyagi’s Bill on Freedom of Religion introduced in the Lok Sabha in December 1978.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report (1998)

Books, Religion, History, Communication

“In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness…. The expanses are so great that the little man hasn’t the resources to orient himself…. This is what I think about Russian suicides.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to D.V. Grigorovich (February 5, 1888)
Letters

People, Thinking, Suicide

“In western society, there is a problem similar to India that the income of a research scientist is less than that of a management person. But perhaps the facilities and the infrastructure being much advanced in the western universities, they are able to attract and retain the people. In our case this can happen but not to the extent we would like. A corrective measure to some extent has been taken by the establishment of the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs). They are doing for pure sciences what IIT’s do for applied sciences. Since they are attracting good talent it may happen that you will have more input in research in the next ten years.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

On the decline of interest in science education among students
An Exclusive Interview with Prof. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar

People, Education, Problem, Universe

“Leading a life like that got me thinking about some big questions. It is sometimes said that Americans and Europeans differ a lot and that they are growing further apart. I disagree—we share the same fundamentals, and that binds us together. Western societies guarantee their citizens something that no other civilizations grant them: privacy. It's one of those things you tend to take for granted unless you lose it. The importance of privacy is unique to Western society with its notion of the sovereign individual. In stark contrast to Western norms, Islam robs people of their privacy and dignity. Islamic societies—including Islamic enclaves in the West—exert tight social control that is indicative of the totalitarian character of Islam.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Source: 2010s, Marked for Death (2012), Ch. 2, pp. 22–23

Life, People, Question, Thinking

“A unitary method of thought is indispensable to the interpretation of European history. The pervasive dualisms which distort the thought of western man are an element in this general condition, which therefore must be diagnosed in a language which does not take these dualisms for granted. No interpretation of European man in traditional European terms can bring the truth to light, any more than the color-blind can know their deficiency.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 25

Truth, Color, History, Light

“I do not pretend to be a man who knows no fear, but when I heard about van Gogh's murder I can honestly say I felt anger, not fear. I defiantly proclaimed to the journalists that I would not allow anyone to intimidate me into silence. I was angry at the assassin and his accomplices, I was angry at Islam—this doctrine that has people murdered for their opinions—and I was angry at the naive politicians, journalists, and so-called intellectuals in the West who refuse to admit how dangerous Islam is and how fundamentally incompatible it is with our Western values and ideals.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Source: 2010s, Marked for Death (2012), Ch. 2: "On Freedom", pp. 10–11

People, Fear, Silence, Anger

“He has a clear style and has had much courage – as in his poem "Babi Yar", a memorial to the Jews murdered by the Nazis. But he is no more than a talented poetaster – which is quite obvious to all but Western journalists – and it would be foolish to consider him as more than a skilful publicist.”

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932–2017) Russian poet, film director, teacher

Martin Seymour-Smith, Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975) vol. 4, pp. 240-1.
Criticism

Courage, Memory, Baby

“In fact, the Eastern civilization is mostly concerned with the inner and spiritual aspects of living while the Western civilization includes the outer and external features of life. Therefore, the connection of these two, which results in looking up to one another in order to learn and improve, complements each of them in a different way. It is necessary to point out that the Eastern and Western civilizations are just taken as examples to explain the unification of cultures. This fact extends to the Northern, Southern, or any of the current civilization of the world.”

Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community

360 Doctrines and Comprehensive Theories, Union of Civilizations

Life, World, Way, Learning

“Prodded by the implacable Foch, Clemenceau at first demanded that Germany's western border be fixed at the Rhine, with the French army standing guard on the left bank and the German population on that side formed into an autonomous state dominated by France. Lloyd George and Wilson would have none of it. "You're trying to create another Alsace-Lorraine," Wilson charged."”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

“Western values, freedom of speech, democracy and rights for women are incompatible with Islam, which is a cancer eating away at our freedoms and our democracy and rights for our women and something needs to be done about it.”

Nick Griffin (1959) British politician

"BNP's Griffin: Islam is a cancer", by Cathy Newman, Channel 4 News (9 July 2009) http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/domestic_politics/bnpaposs+griffin+islam+is+a+cancer/3257872.html

Women, Democracy, Freedom

“Isn't the use by America and some Western governments of their fire against others in the world including, or in the forefront of whom are the Arabs and the Muslims, one of the most important reasons of the lack of stability in the world at the present time? Isn't the evil inflicted on America in the act of September 11, 2001, and nothing else, a result of this and other acts? This is the main question and this is what the American administration along with of the Western governments or the Western public opinion should answer in the first place with serenity and responsibility, without emotional reaction and without the use of the same old methods that America used against the world.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Open letter to the American peoples http://www.wadinet.de/news/iraq/nw273_saddamopenletter.htm (15 September 2001).

World, Question, Evil, Time

“The Christian missionary orchestra in India after independence has continued to rise from one crescendo to another with the applause of the Nehruvian establishment manned by a brood of self-alienated Hindus spawned by missionary-macaulayite education. The only rift in the lute has been K. M. Panikkar’s Asia and Western Dominance published in 1953, the Report of the Christian Missionary Activities Committee Madhya Pradesh published in 1956, Om Prakash Tyagi’s Bill on Freedom of Religion introduced in the Lok Sabha in 1978, Arun Shourie’s Missionaries in India published in 1994 and the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Bill introduced in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly by Mangal Prabhat Lodha, M. L. A. on 20 December 1996.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report (1998)

Education, Religion, Freedom

“It may be relevant here to recall gratefully a fraternal correction I was kindly offered by the Archimandrite Ambrosius of the Greek Orthodox Church. After listening to a lecture I delivered at Oxford University some years ago, he gently chided me (in private, not in public) for not perceiving the difference between the brand of Hellenism affecting Western theology that had absorbed the philosophical thought of ancient Greece, and the Hellenism of Eastern Orthodox theology which had assimilated the spiritual praxis of their non-Christian ancestors. Mulling over this critical observation of his, I came to understand why our scholastic tradition has not given importance to what Greek Orthodox spirituality has named nepsis (vigilance), which is its own technical term for mindfulness.”

Aloysius Pieris (1934) Sri Lankan Jesuit priest

Source: "Spirituality as Mindfulness: Biblical and Buddhist Approaches", p. 39

Understanding, Universe

“If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

On receiving the "Family of Man" Award (1964); as quoted in Prime Time: The Life of Edward R. Murrow by Alexander Kendrick (1969)

Color, Christ

“Westerns. One after another. They get shittier and shittier, and the so-called directors get lousier and lousier. And the more incompetent they are, the more hostile they act.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

Source: Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996), p. 210

Hostility

“The vegan diet in the western industrial society is important to me because I feel that if you open yourself up to eating dairy and meat then you’re taking part in basically a holocaust for animals. You know it’s very different if you’re in some tribal situation where people are fishing — like how we used to live. Maybe we would have eaten meat sometimes. But this kind of American idea we have of traditional eating is the cause of so much torture and misery. I don’t want to eat that – it’s gross. Animals are my friends and so it feels weird to eat them.”

Daniela Sea (1977) American filmmaker, actor, and musician

" Farm Sanctuary Exclusive: Daniela Sea Won't Take Part In An Animal Holocaust http://www.ecorazzi.com/2008/12/09/farm-sanctuary-exclusive-daniela-sea-wont-take-part-in-an-animal-holocaust/", interview with Ecorazzi (9 December 2008).

People, Feeling, Idea, Fish

Quotes about western page 5

Quotes about western
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