Western Quotes - Page 3

• Violence is hidden within democratic structures because they are not radically democratic - Western democracy is merely a domestic convenience of consumerism.

  Edward Bond

  Democracy, Literature, Violence

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• A terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur] somewhere in the Western world - it may be in the United States of America - that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event.

  Tommy Franks

  Country, Order, America

  "General Tommy Franks". Interview by Marvin R. Shanken, www.cigaraficionado.com. December 2003.

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• Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.

  Lewis Mumford

  Technology, Arbitrary, Novelty

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• Western man wrote "his" history as if it were the history of the entire human race.

  John Oliver Killens

  Men, Race, Diversity

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• Who in the world remembers who won the 1975 Westchester Classic or the 1978 Western Open? Basically, the majors are the only comparison over time . . . played on the same courses for generations. All the best players are always there.

  Jack Nicklaus

  Golf, Player, Generations

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• Much have I traveled 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.

  John Keats

  Eye, Men, Islands

  "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" l. 5 (1817)

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• New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, New York, Powerful

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• When I was young I used to read about the decline of Western civilization, and I decided it was something I would like to make a contribution to.

  George Carlin

  Humorous, Civilization, Used

  George Carlin (2002). “Napalm & Silly Putty”, Hyperion

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• Since Western society is deteriorating, it has become overrun with immorality, and God is going to judge it, and destroy it. And the only way the black people caught up in this society can be saved is not to integrate into this corrupt society, but to separate from it, to a land of our own, where we can reform ourselves, lift up our moral standards and try to be godly.

  Malcolm X

  Godly, Land, People

  Malcolm X (2015). “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, p.282, Ballantine Books

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• The kind of pace that you want to use in a Western - just to acknowledge the land in the distance that everyone has to travel, and the way things develop sort of slowly - it's almost the antithetical of what's currently going on in the movies, you know.

  Lawrence Kasdan

  Travel, Distance, Land

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• But he knew people and he was head writer for Have Gun Will Travel, and if you took those early Star Treks that we did and put us in a western wardrobe and put us on wagon train going west, we can say the same lines.

  Majel Barrett

  Travel, Stars, Gun

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• In the Western standards of modesty, there are different guidelines.

  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Basketball, Different, Modesty

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• When I was a kid, if a guy got killed in a western movie I always wondered who got his horse.

  George Carlin

  Movie, Horse, Kids

  George Carlin (2002). “Napalm & Silly Putty”, Hyperion

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• Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues.

  Sogyal Rinpoche

  Real, Buddhism, Issues

  Sogyal Rinpoche (2009). “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: The Spiritual Classic & International Bestseller: Revised and Updated Edition”, p.27, Harper Collins

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• Public charities, foodbanks and church pantries are doing more than ever before, but they can't keep up with the need. We can never end hunger only through the wonderful work of local charities. Like other Western democracies, we must end our national problem of hunger through national and political leadership. Charity is nice for some things, but not as a way to feed a nation. We don't protect our national security through charity, and we shouldn't protect our families and children that way either.

  Jeff Bridges

  Children, Nice, Inspiration

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• Our soul, our true self, is the most mysterious, essential, and magical dimension of our being. In fact, it is not a separate reality, as traditional Western thought views it, but the cohesive force that unites our body, heart, and mind. It is not a ghost trapped somehow in the physical machinery of our body but the very essence of our being.

  Gabrielle Roth

  Heart, Reality, Self

  Gabrielle Roth, John Loudon (1998). “Maps to Ecstasy: A Healing Journey for the Untamed Spirit”, p.142, New World Library

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• I never violate an inner rhythm. I loathe to force anything. I don't know if the inner rhythm is Eastern or Western. I know it is essential for me. I listen to it and I stay with it. I have always been this way. I have regards for the inner voice.

  Lee Krasner

  Voice, Intuition, Essentials

  Robert Carleton Hobbs, Lee Krasner (1993). “Lee Krasner”, Abbeville Press

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• My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest... no country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak... Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism... true democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Country, Freedom, Opportunity

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• At the heart of that western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man...is the touchstone of value, and all society, all groups, and states, exist for that person's benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any western society.

  Robert Kennedy

  Heart, Men, Practice

  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 science is a product of the Apollonian mind: its hope is that by naming and classification, by the cold light of intellect, archaic night can be pushed back and defeated.

  Camille Paglia

  Science, Night, Light

  Camille Paglia (2018). “Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism”, p.31, Canongate Books

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• Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of 33, like Riemann before him. Working in total isolation from the main currents of his field, he was able to rederive 100 years' worth of Western mathematics on his own. The tragedy of his life is that much of his work was wasted rediscovering known mathematics.

  Michio Kaku

  Life, Science, Men

  "Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension". Book by Michio Kaku, March 24, 1994.

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• I believe in free will. Of those that, like us, are in a privileged situation at least. For you, for me: people who are living in western society, people who are not repressed, who are free. We can choose. The things go largely like you want them to go. You control your own life. Your own will is extremely powerful.

  J. K. Rowling

  Wise, Witty, Powerful

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• Day, like a weary pilgrim, had reached the western gate of heaven, and Evening stooped down to unloose the latchets of his sandal shoon.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Heaven, Evening, Sandals

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1871). “Hyperion: A Romance”, p.340

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• In contemplating the pecuniary resources needed for the removal of such a number to so great a distance [freed slaves to Africa], my thoughts and hopes have long been turned to the rich fund presented in the western lands of the nation . . .

  James Madison

  Distance, Land, Numbers

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• Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  Fall, Democracies Have, Two

  "Iran Leader Says Western-Style Democracy Has Failed". abcnews.go.com. May 9, 2006.

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