Western World Quotes

“Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning.”
― Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

“Commentators who today talk of 'The Dark Ages' when faith instead of reason was said to ruthlessly rule, have for their animadversions only the excuse of perfect ignorance. Both Aquinas' intellectual gifts and his religious nature were of a kind that is no longer commonly seen in the Western world.”
― David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

“In the pragmatist, streetwise climate of advanced postmodern capitalism, with its scepticism of big pictures and grand narratives, its hard-nosed disenchantment with the metaphysical, 'life' is one among a whole series of discredited totalities. We are invited to think small rather than big – ironically, at just the point when some of those out to destroy Western civilization are doing exactly the opposite. In the conflict between Western capitalism and radical Islam, a paucity of belief squares up to an excess of it. The West finds itself faced with a full-blooded metaphysical onslaught at just the historical point that it has, so to speak, philosophically disarmed. As far as belief goes, postmodernism prefers to travel light: it has beliefs, to be sure, but it does not have faith.”
― Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life

“Here are two enormous worlds side by side; what's remarkable is how little notice they have taken of each other. If the Western and Islamic worlds were two individual human beings, we might see symptoms of repression here. We might ask," What happened between these two? Were they lovers once? Is there some history of abuse?”
― Tamim Ansary, Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes

“Globalization by the way of McDonald’s and KFC has captured the hearts, the minds, and from what I can see through the window, the growing bellies of the folks here.”
― Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina

“We speak more freely of our emotional complexes than of our material condition or of our socio-professional milieu; we prefer to ask ourselves about the homosexual component of our characters than about the history which has made us and which we have made. We too are victims and accomplices of alienation, reification, mystification. We too stagger beneath 'the weight of things said and done', of lies accepted and transmitted without belief. But we have no wish to know it. We are like sleepwalkers treading in a gutter, dreaming of our genitals rather than looking at our feet.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Between Existentialism and Marxism

“It is quite possible to say that the price a Negro pays for becoming articulate is to find himself, at length, with nothing to be articulate about. (" You taught me language, "says Caliban to Prospero," and my profit on't is I know how to curse. ")”
― James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

“In the Western world, Conservatism is a synonym for Liberalism, and Liberalism a synonym for Activism.”
― Isaiah Senones

“British diplomats, constantly exposed to American political-ethical rhetoric, find their professional skills tested to the limits by the need to keep a straight face. For illustrations of what I mean, study the photographs of the expressions worn by Mr Douglas Hurd at any international conference involving all the Western allies.”
― Conor Cruise O'Brien, On the Eve of the Millennium

“Girls should be taught at school that giving birth to an unnaturally over-sized western baby that no longer fits down the birth canal may lead to a multitude of long term health problems.”
― Steven Magee

“Right now, we're soft. You, me, the whole Western world. We're the result of growing up in unprecedented comfort and stability. It's the kids of today that'll have to make the world of tomorrow work. And they're going to inherit a mess.”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“Bartender:" Listen to me. This is real freedom, freedom to own property, make a profit, make your life. The West, so afraid of strong government, now has no government. Only financial power. "

JC Denton: "Our governments have limited power by design."

Bartender: "Rheroric... And you belive it! Don't you know where those slogans come from? Well-paid researchers -- how do you say it? --" think tanks, "funded by big businesses. What is that?" A think tank "? It's privately-funded propagandea. The Trilateral Commission in the United States, for instance.”
― Sheldon Pacotti, Chris Todd, and Austin Grossman

“There are some very stupid men in the capitals of the Western World--the more stupid because they think they are so wise. It would seem to me that almost anybody would know by now that colored peoples do not like to be ruled by outside forces, Jim Crowed, segregated, told what to do by aliens, and in general kicked around.”
― Langston Hughes, Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings

“If Western civilization does not now respond constructively to the challenge to banish racism, some future historian will have to say that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“An diesem Punkt gibt es keinen einzigen ihrer »Werte« [der Zivilisation des Westens] mehr, an den sie noch auf irgendeine Art zu glauben vermöchte, und jede Affirmation wirkt auf sie wie eine schamlose Tat, wie eine Provokation, die man besser zerlegen,dekonstruierenund in den Zustand des Zweifels zurückführen sollte. Der westliche Imperialismus heute, das ist der des Relativismus, des »Das ist deine Ansicht«, das ist der kleine Seitenblick oder der verletzte Protest gegen all das, was dumm genug, primitiv genug oder selbstgefällig genug ist, um noch an etwas zu glauben, um noch irgendetwas zu behaupten. Es ist dieser Dogmatismus der Infragestellung, der in der gesamten universitären und literarischen Intelligenzija komplizenhaft mit dem Auge zwinkert. Unter den postmodernistischen Geistesgrößen ist keine Kritik zu radikal, solange sie ein Nichts an Gewissheit umhüllt. Vor einem Jahrhundert verursachte jede ein wenig lärmmachende Negation einen Skandal, heute liegt er in jeder Affirmation, die nicht zittert.”
― Unsichtbares Komitee, The Coming Insurrection

“In Tuzla, erzählt sie, gebe es Kinder, die noch nie eine Portion Pommes frites gesehen haben. Hach, denke ich, so viel Elend auf der Welt.
"Und Sie", frage ich, "schon mal eine Portion Pilav gesehen?"
Sie stutzt. "What’s Pilav?" "Fastfood" ‚ sage ich. "Landestypisch."
Das habe ich von der Menütafel an der Wand in ihrem Rücken abgelesen. Sie wechselt das Thema.”
― Juli Zeh

“I have seen the tourism market shift over the last ten years with greater value attached to the culture of places, seen people growing sick of plastic phoniness and genuinely wanting to experience places and people that do different things. I see how bored we have grown of ourselves in the modern Western world and how people can fight back and shape their futures using their history as an advantage not an obligation.”
― James Rebanks, The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District

“We are just a people that have refused to improve with the times. Quick to copy the western world in a lot of things but have never been able to copy their DECENCY in civil matters.”
― Chukuwuneta Oby

“Medien, Waren und Verfahren des Westens erschaffen jedenorts eine fragmentarische Zweitkultur, ohne die autochthonen abzulösen und ohne die westliche Lebenswelt greifbar zu machen. Infolge der Dauerpräsenz seiner Kulturtechniken scheint der Westen selbst nur noch eine Kulturtechnik [...] zu sein[...].”
― Frank Böckelmann, Die Gelben, die Schwarzen, die Weißen

“Democracy is a freak condition in the world's history: civil liberties are not common liberties even today, and most people in the world have never possessed them.”
― Geoffrey Blainey, The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000