Western Quotes - Page 2

• The things I believed in dont exist any more. It's foolish to pretend that they do. Western Civilization finally went up in smoke in the chimneys at Dachau but I was too infatuated to see it. I see it now.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Civilization, Dachau, Foolish

  Cormac McCarthy (2011). “The Sunset Limited: A Novel in Dramatic Form”, p.11, Pan Macmillan

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• He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Sleep, Army, Expression

  All Quiet on the Western Front ch. 12 (1929) (translation by A. W. Wheen) See Beers 1

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• Education is education. We should learn everything and then choose which path to follow." Education is neither Eastern nor Western, it is human.

  Malala Yousafzai

  Path, Should, Eastern

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• Thinking, or more precisely identification with thinking, gives rise to and maintains the ego, which, in our Western society in particular, is out of control. It believes it is real and tries hard to maintain its supremacy. Negative states of mind, such as anger, resentment, fear, envy, and jealousy, are products of the ego.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Fear, Real

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• Indigestion: A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind. As the simple Red Man of the Western Wild put it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force: 'Plenty well, no pray; big belly ache, heap God.'

  Ambrose Bierce

  Religious, Mistake, Food

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.128, University of Georgia Press

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• The enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and abiding practice of any western society.

  Robert Kennedy

  Freedom, Practice, Goal

  Robert F. Kennedy's Day of Affirmation Address at the University of Capetown, South Africa, www.mtholyoke.edu. June 6, 1966.

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• Western civilization is based upon the libertarian principle, and all its achievements are the results of the action of free men.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Freedom, Men, Civilization

  Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Newton Rothbard (1980). “Planning for freedom, and sixteen other essays and addresses”, Libertarian Press, Incorporated

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• An effective proclamation of the Gospel in contemporary Western society will need to confront directly the widespread spirit of agnosticism and relativism which has cast doubt on reason's ability to know the truth, which alone satisfies the human heart's restless quest for meaning.

  Pope John Paul II

  God, Heart, Doubt

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• Western elites - the beneficiaries of 60 years of peace and prosperity achieved by the sacrifices to defeat fascism and Communism - are unhappy in their late middle age, and show little gratitude for, or any idea about, what gave them such latitude. If they cannot find perfection in history, they see no good at all.

  Victor Davis Hanson

  Gratitude, Sacrifice, Years

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• Generally, the shaking is consciously felt in its positive aspects — as the wonderful new heaven and earth which love with its miracle and mystery has suddenly produced. Love is the answer, we sing. Our Western culture seems to be engaged in a romantic - albeit desperate - conspiracy to enforce the illusion that that is all there is to eros.

  Rollo May

  Life, Falling In Love, Love Is

  "Love & Will".

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• Her blue eyes sought the west afar,
  For lovers love the western star.

  Walter Scott

  Love, Life, Stars

  Sir Walter Scott (1855). “The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott”, p.31

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• Our society is only as healthy as our most vulnerable citizens. It is unconscionable that the weakest links in our country are our hungry children. No other Western industrialized nation has widespread hunger within its borders. We really must put an end to hunger in the United States if we are to keep our prosperity and protect the future.

  Linda Gray

  Country, Children, Future

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• We also learn that this country and the Western world have no monopoly of goodness and truth and scholarship, we begin to appreciate the ingredients that are indispensable to making a better world. In a life of learning that is, perhaps, the greatest lesson of all.

  John Hope Franklin

  Country, Truth, Life Lesson

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• It is a fact that all the ballet's fundamental dance steps are derived from the folk dances of Western Europe.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dance, Europe, Fundamentals

  "Ninette de Valois: An Idealist Without Illusions".

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• If the Aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it.

  Stanley Marion Garn

  Wisdom, Civilization, Common Sense

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• Women over fifty already form one of the largest groups in the population structure of the western world. As long as they like themselves, they will not be an oppressed minority. In order to like themselves they must reject trivialization by others of who and what they are. A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.

  Germaine Greer

  Girl, Order, Land

  "The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause". Book by Germaine Greer, 1991.

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• In the West, people pride themselves on being the defenders of democratic rights and the champions of freedom. But if the Western world really cares for the benevolence of the whole world, it will have to turn to introspection.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Yoga, Pride, Rights

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• One of the stupidest theories of Western life.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Evolution, Theory, Stupidest

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• The influence (for good or ill) of Plato's work is immeasurable. Western thought, one might say, has been Platonic or anti-Platonic, but hardly ever non-Platonic.

  Karl Popper

  Plato, Hard Work, Science

  Karl Popper (2014). “After The Open Society: Selected Social and Political Writings”, p.190, Routledge

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• O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
  Thro' the clear windows of the morning, turn
  Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
  Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!
  
  The hills tell each other, and the listening
  Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turned
  Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth,
  And let thy holy feet visit our clime.
  
  Come o'er the eastern hills, and let our winds
  Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste
  Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls
  Upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee.

  William Blake

  Morning, Spring, Eye

  William Blake (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of William Blake (Illustrated)”, p.18, Delphi Classics

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• Practically everyone now bemoans Western man's sense of alienation, lack of community, and inability to find ways of organizing society for human ends. We have reached the end of the road that is built on the set of traits held out for male identity-advance at any cost, pay any price, drive out all competitors, and kill them if necessary.

  Jean Baker Miller

  Men, Community, Identity

  Jean Baker Miller (2012). “Toward a New Psychology of Women”, p.88, Beacon Press

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• [Let] the poor the needy and oppressed of the Earth, and those who want Land, resort to the fertile lands of our western country, the second land of Promise, and there dwell in peace, fulfilling the first and great commandment.

  George Washington

  Country, Land, Promise

  Jay A. Parry, Andrew M. Allison, George Washington (1991). “The real George Washington”, Natl Center for Constitutional

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• Today we are in a situation in which the free movement of people can have enormous, monumental dimensions, and I don't think that any country in Western Europe or in America can any longer adopt the idea of totally free movement of people. I t would simply overwhelm their social facilities, their societies and create migratory dynamics on the scales of tens and tens of millions of people. That simply is not practical.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Country, Thinking, Europe

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• Our modern Western culture only recognises the first of these, freedom of desires. It then worships such a freedom by enshrining it at the forefront of national constituitions and bills of human rights. One can say that the underlying creed of most Western democracies is to protect their people's freedom to realise their desires, as far as this is possible. It is remarkable that in such countries people do not feel very free. The second kind of freedom, freedom from desires, is celebrated only in some religious communities. It celebrates contentment, peace that is free from desires.

  Ajahn Brahm

  Country, Religious, Buddhist

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• It is impossible not to feel stirred at the thought of the emotions of man at certain historic moments of adventure and discovery - Columbus when he first saw the Western shore, Pizarro when he stared at the Pacific Ocean, Franklin when the electric spark came from the string of his kite, Galileo when he first turned his telescope to the heavens. Such moments are also granted to students in the abstract regions of thought, and high among them must be placed the morning when Descartes lay in bed and invented the method of co-ordinate geometry.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Morning, Ocean, Adventure

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