Western Culture Quotes - Page 2

• They [the Templars] had read Avicenna, and they were not ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you live alongside a tolerant, mystical, libertine culture for two centuries without succumbing to its allure, particularly when you compared it to Western culture, which was crude, vulgar, barbaric, and Germanic?

  Umberto Eco

  Two, Ignorant, Century

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.99, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• One cannot fail to observe a crushing irony: the gospel of relativistic tolerance is perhaps the most “evangelistic” movement in Western culture at the moment, demanding assent and brooking no rivals.

  D. A. Carson

  Crush, Tolerance, Movement

  D. A. Carson (2009). “The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism”, p.38, Harper Collins

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• Sharing knowledge is not part of Western culture

  Fons Trompenaars

  Culture, Sharing Knowledge, Western

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• The paradigm of Western culture is that the essence of persons is dangerous; thus, they must be taught, guided, and controlled by those with superior authority.

  Carl Rogers

  Essence, Taught, Authority

  Carl Ransom Rogers (1995). “A Way of Being”, p.201, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In fact, Western culture has spent decades drawing lines and boxes around interconnected phenomena. We've chunked the world into pieces rather than explored its webby nature.

  Margaret J. Wheatley

  Drawing, Pieces, World

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• The question was heatedly debated of how much Western culture should be brought into China.

  Chen-Ning Yang

  Gdp, Should, China

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

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• The separation of sex from emotion is at the very foundations of Western culture and civilization.

  Shulamith Firestone

  Sex, Civilization, Culture

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• Monotheism at Sinai, primitive Christianity, messianic socialism: these are the three supreme moments in which Western culture is presented with what Ibsen termed "the claims of the ideal." These are the three stages, profoundly interrelated, through which Western consciousness is forced to experience the blackmail of transcendence.

  George Steiner

  Three, Consciousness, Socialism

  "In Bluebeard's Castle". Book by George Steiner, 1971.

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• Istanbul is a vast place. There are very conservative neighbourhoods, there are places that are upper class, Westernised, consuming Western culture.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Istanbul, Class, Conservative

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• Feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the very organization of nature. Many women give up in despair: if that's how deep it goes they don't want to know.

  Shulamith Firestone

  Giving Up, Organization, Feminist

  SHULAMITH FIRESTONE (1970). “THE DIALECTIC OF SEX: THE CASE FOR FEMINIST REVOLUTION”

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• My new work deals with emptying my body: 'Boat emptying, stream entering.' This means that you have to empty the body/boat to the point where you can really be connected with the fields of energy around you. I think that men and women in our Western culture are completely disconnected from that energy, and in my new work I want to make this connection possible.

  Marina Abramovic

  Mean, Men, Thinking

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• I see myself today as Sitting Bull trying to bring a voice of Easternism, holism, community-based thinking to a very Western culture.

  Joel Salatin

  Thinking, Voice, Community

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• In short, the enlightenment privatized marriage, taking it out of the public sphere, and redefined its purpose as individual gratification, not any 'broader good' such as reflecting God's nature, producing character, or raising children. Slowly but surely, this newer understanding of the meaning of marriage has displaced the older ones in Western culture.

  Timothy Keller

  Christian, Children, Character

  Timothy Keller (2011). “The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God”, p.20, Penguin

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• The present aristocracy of western culture, at the very moment when it most clearly dominates the world, is being imitated rapidly and successfully in every eastern country.

  John Desmond Bernal

  Country, Gdp, Aristocracy

  "The World, the Flesh and the Devil: An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul". Book by John Desmond Bernal, 1929.

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• My tendency to idealize Western civilization arises from my nationalistic desire to use the West in order to reform China. But this has led me to overlook the flaws of Western culture.

  Liu Xiaobo

  Order, Civilization, Desire

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• I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense, and 'cathedral-like' structure of the highly educated and articulate personality--a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) there placement of complex inner density with a new kind of self--evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the 'instantly available.'

  Richard Foreman

  Unique, Technology, Men

  "The Pancake People, Or, 'The Gods Are Pounding My Head'". A Statement, www.edge.org. March 8, 2005.

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• I want to look my best for God. So many people have the attitude that if you're a Christian you've got to dress bad, wear an old color, not do anything to your hair, have nothing. It's no wonder that Christianity is not very attractive. I mean, how many people do you know in a Western culture that's going to go, 'Yeah, give me some of that?'

  Joyce Meyer

  Christian, Attitude, Mean

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• The most important word in American, in Western culture, is "I."

  Gene Simmons

  Important, Culture, Western

  Source: www.news-leader.com

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• Information and inspiration are everywhere... history, art, architecture, everything an illustrator needs. Europe is, after all, the land that has generated most of the enduring myths and legends of Western culture.

  John Howe

  Art, Inspiration, Europe

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• 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

  Powerful, Principles, Fundamentals

  "Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians". Book by Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky, January 20, 2009.

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• If western culture is shown to be rich it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to "dissolve" harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind.

  Umberto Eco

  Mind, Enlightenment, Inquiry

  "The roots of conflict" by Umberto Eco, www.theguardian.com. October 13, 2001.

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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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• 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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• 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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