Western Quotes - Page 7

• The governments of the Western nations, whether monarchical or republican, had passed into the invisible hands of a plutocracy, international in power and grasp. It was, I venture to suggest, this semi-occult power which....pushed the mass of the American people into the cauldron of World War I.

  J. F. C. Fuller

  War, World Government, Hands

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• This world has seen a great many civilizations. And many of them have survived for longer periods than ours up to the present. They were all as sure as we are today of having founded the first eternal civilization. We today differ from them in having our western civilization spread to embrace the entire planet, leaving no room on any continent for any other culture to take over if we fail.

  Thor Heyerdahl

  Other Cultures, Civilization, Leaving

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• After attending a banquet honoring the 1974 BYU team that won the Western AthleticConference and went to the Fiesta Bowl. It was the first of Edwards' 18 WAC champions and 21 bowl teams. That was the group of kids that totally changed the direction of my life and the direction of our football program. We started 0-3-1 and won seven or eight in a row. They were the first bowl team in school history. I hadn't really accomplished anything yet. To see all those guys reminded me where we've been. It was an emotional night.

  LaVell Edwards

  Football, Team, School

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• Unlike most heritages, Western civilization is not primarily a geographical place or a genetic bloodline. It is a state of mind. No matter where on earth one was born, to become heir to Western civilization's ancestry, one need only pledge allegiance to reason and individual liberty-the civilized, life-affirming values that represent the "West at its best."

  Terri Runnels

  Life, Civilization, Individuality

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• In Western society, and particularly in American society, imagination is stulified from infancy. The imaginative child is discouraged and upbraided. He is told that the process is mere dreaming, that it wastes time and leads nowhere. It is said to be "impractical." As the child grows and its imagination inevitably leads it to express unconventional ideas and to try new behavior, it is chided and even viciously punished for such signs of unorthodoxy.

  Philip Wylie

  Dream, Children, Ideas

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• Even in the Western world, one cannot argue that the ideal has been achieved given the existence of issues like the integration, participation and representation of Muslim citizens, and occasional but lingering anti-Semitism.

  Recep Tayyip Erdogan

  Issues, Citizens, World

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• In Western Australia, minerals are being dug up from Aboriginal land and shipped to China for a profit of a billion dollars a week. In this, the richest, 'booming' state, the prisons bulge with stricken Aboriginal people, including juveniles whose mothers stand at the prison gates, pleading for their release. The incarceration of black Australians here is eight times that of black South Africans during the last decade of apartheid.

  John Pilger

  Mother, Eight, Land

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• Christianity is the very root and foundation of Western civilization.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  Civilization, Roots, Foundation

  Dinesh D'Souza (2008). “What's So Great about Christianity”, Tyndale House Pub

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• It's true that the war in Iraq opened a distance in relations between part of Europe and the U.S. government, but our basic ties are stronger than that. We share democracy, free markets and a commitment to Western security. We differ on how to guarantee that security.

  Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

  Distance, War, Commitment

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• Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se.

  David Foster Wallace

  Gdp, Pleasure, Ends

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• I cannot emphasize enough how wrongheaded this is. Withholding criticism and ignoring differences are racism in its purest form. Yet these cultural experts fail to notice that, through their anxious avoidance of criticizing non-Western countries, they trap the people who represent these cultures in a state of backwardness. The experts may have the best of intentions, but as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  Country, Differences, Racism

  "Excerpt: 'The Caged Virgin'", www.npr.org. May 4, 2006.

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• We don't have a clue what it is to be male or female, or if there are intermediate genders. Male and female might be fields which overlap into androgyny or different kinds of sexual desires. But because we live in a Western, patriarchal world, we have very little chance of exploring these gender possibilities.

  Kathy Acker

  Desire, Males, Female

  "Eve Experts". Real World Multimedia, realworldmultimedia.com, 2004.

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• For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane.

  Neal Stephenson

  Oxygen, Atmosphere, Trying

  "In the Kindom of Mao Bell" by Neal Stephenson, www.wired.com. February 1, 1994.

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• A citizen of the Roman Empire, for example, would have placed less value on individual liberty in the modern Western sense than on collective responsibility.

  Stephen Baxter

  Responsibility, Liberty, Example

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• Chiropractic works in harmony with the basic healing forces of the body, whereas the allopathic, western medical establishment doesn't have nearly as holistic a vision.

  John Robbins

  Healing, Vision, Body

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• Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.

  Octavio Paz

  Writing, Beggar, Knows

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• Multiculturalism asserts that all cultures are equal and therefore none may criticize another; intellectuals and politicians are therefore reluctant to declare the obvious superiority of Western culture to Islamic culture.

  Edwin A. Locke

  Islamic, Political, Western Culture

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• Radical feminism is the most destructive and fanatical movement to come down to us from the Sixties. This is a revolutionary, not a reformist, movement, and it is meeting with considerable success. Totalitarian in spirit, it is deeply antagonistic to traditional Western culture and proposes the complete restructuring of society, morality, and human nature.

  Robert Bork

  Radical Feminism, Feminist, Western Culture

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• The belief that married-couple families are superior is probably the most pervasive prejudice in the Western world.

  Judith Stacey

  Couple, Feminist, Prejudice

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• Liberty without discipline cannot survive. Without order and authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the Western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty during which men forgot the elementary truths of human existence. They forgot that their freedom was achieved by heroic sacrifice.

  Walter Lippmann

  Life, Clever, Sacrifice

  "The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy".

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• England is, after all, the land where children are beaten, wives and babies bashed, football hooligans crunch, and Miss Whip and Miss Lash ply their trade as nowhere else in the western world.

  Colin MacInnes

  Football, Baby, Sweet

  "Out of the way: later essays".

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• The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Civilization, America, Essentials

  Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method”

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• This freedom of political discussion on the highest level is something which Western civilization has in common with that of classical antiquity, but with no other

  Christopher Dawson

  Civilization, Political, Levels

  Christopher Dawson (2010). “The Crisis of Western Education (The Works of Christopher Dawson)”, p.95, CUA Press

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• No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion

  Christopher Dawson

  War, Passion, Past

  Christopher Dawson (2010). “The Crisis of Western Education (The Works of Christopher Dawson)”, p.94, CUA Press

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• Rail as they will about 'discrimination,' women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism.

  Pat Buchanan

  Stupid, Ambition, Scary

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