Western Culture Quotes

• Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth.

  Ayn Rand

  Needs, Code Of Ethics, Management

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.413, Penguin

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• It would be impossible to be a woman in Western culture and not have your own issues about your image and what you look like.

  America Ferrera

  Issues, Would Be, Looks

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• What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

  Thomas Sowell

  World, Blame, Praise

  Thomas Sowell (2006). “Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

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• According to this view, democracy is a product of western culture, and it cannot be applied to the Middle East which has a different cultural, religious, sociological and historical background.

  Recep Tayyip Erdogan

  Religious, Views, Historical

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• And so, inevitably, one returns to the centre of Western culture, Greece, and we have never, in any sense, lost our ties with the architectural concepts that this country's ancient civilization explored and demonstrated, nor with the political and social freedom that lay behind them.

  Stephen Gardiner

  Civilization, Gdp, Ties

  "The house: its origins and evolution".

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• In the latter half of the last century the impact of the expanding influence of Western culture and economic system brought about in China a severe conflict.

  Chen-Ning Yang

  Impact, Half, Lasts

  Chen Ning Yang (2005). “Selected Papers, 1945-1980, with Commentary”, p.247, World Scientific

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• I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam.

  Muhammad Abduh

  Religious, Islamic, East

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• The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.

  Samuel P. Huntington

  War, Winning, Tyrants

  Samuel P. Huntington (1997). “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”, p.51, Penguin Books India

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• We are living through one of the most fundamental shifts in history- a change in the actual belief structure of Western society. No economic, political, or military power can compare with the power of a change of mind. By deliberately changing their images of reality, people are changing the world.

  Willis Harman

  Change, Military, Life Changing

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• The American culture especially, and Western culture in general, urges us to not only become the best that we can be, but also win against the competition.

  Roger Housden

  Winning, Competition, American Culture

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.

  Rick Warren

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  "EXCLUSIVE Rick Warren: 'Flat Out Wrong' That Muslims, Christians View God the Same". Interview with Brandon A. Cox and The Christian Post, www.christianpost.com. March 2, 2012.

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• Our perception that we have 'no time' is one of the distinctive marks of modern Western culture.

  Margaret Visser

  Perception, Modern, Mark

  Margaret Visser (2015). “The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners”, p.276, Open Road Media

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• Color is one way the eye and the brain work together to define the external world. However, not all cultures see color in the same way, nor do they give it as much importance as in western culture.

  Nita Leland

  Eye, Color, Giving

  Nita Leland (1998). “Exploring Color”, p.13, North Light Books

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• There is something intrinsically, systemically wrong with white, western culture, and if we don't fix it, it won't continue.

  James Cromwell

  White, Ifs, Culture

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• With few exceptions, democracy has not brought good government to new developing countries. What Asians value may not necessarily be what Americans or Europeans value. Westerners value the freedoms and liberties of the individual. As an Asian of Chinese cultural backround, my values are for a government which is honest, effective and efficient.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Country, Honesty, Freedom

  "Democracy, Human Rights and the Realities". Speech in Tokyo, www.theguardian.com. November 20, 1992.

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• The secularization of Western culture was accompanied by the elevation of art to the position of a substitute religion to replace Christianity.

  Leland Ryken

  Christian, Religious, Art

  Leland Ryken (2005). “The Liberated Imagination: Thinking Christianly About the Arts”, p.222, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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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, May

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• The great achievement of Western culture since the Enlightenment is to make many of us peer over the wall and grant some respect to people outside it; the great failure of Western Culture is to deny that walls are inevitable or important.

  James Q. Wilson

  Wall, People, Achievement

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• It's sort of another innovation, probably a good innovation, of Western culture to separate the ideas between science and philosophy, but it's important to remember they weren't always separate realms of inquiry.

  Brad Warner

  Philosophy, Ideas, Innovation

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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• Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels.

  Bell Hooks

  Struggle, Feminism, Levels

  bell hooks (2014). “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center”, p.26, Routledge

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• Asked to make a list of the men who have most dominated the thinking of the modern world, many educated people would name Freud, Einstein, Marx and Darwin. Of these four, only Darwin was not Jewish. In a world where Jews are only a tiny percentage of the population, what is the secret of the disproportionate importance the Jews have had in the history of Western culture?

  Ernest Van den Haag

  Men, Thinking, Names

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• We in the "developed" world seem to have many auditory strategies that insulate us from the presence of silence, simplicity, and solitude. When I return to Western culture after time in desert, mountain or forest, I discover how we have filled our world with a multiplicity of noises, a symphony of forgetfulness that keeps our won thoughts and realizations, feelings and intuitions out of audible range.

  Joan Halifax

  Our World, Symphony, Silence

  Joan Halifax (2007). “The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom”, p.38, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• There are basically only two subject matters in all Western culture: sex and death. We do have some ability to manipulate sex nowadays. We have no ability, and never will have, to manipulate death.

  Peter Greenaway

  Sex, Two, Matter

  Peter Greenaway, Vernon W. Gras (2000). “Peter Greenaway: Interviews”, p.114, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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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, Movement

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• Sex IS power. Identity is power. In western culture, there are no nonexploitative relationships. Everyone has killed in order to live.

  Camille Paglia

  Sex, Order, Identity

  Camille Paglia (2018). “Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism”, p.28, Canongate Books

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