Western Culture Quotes - Page 4

• I realize that I've had a very idyllic vision of what spirituality looks like. Honestly, most of Western culture has an idyllic and simplified idea of what enlightenment entails.

  Alexander Weinstein

  Ideas, Vision, Enlightenment

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• We, including many Christians, read the Bible through "eyes" conditioned by, and even accommodated to, modern Western culture plus the influences of messages and ideas from other cultures that are alien to the worldview of the biblical writers. Therefore, in order fully to understand the Bible and allow the Bible to absorb the world (rather than the world - culture - absorb the Bible) we must practice an "archaeology" of the biblical writers' implicit, assumed view of reality.

  Roger E. Olson

  Christian, Eye, Biblical

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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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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• 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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• The indigenous peoples understand that they have to recover their cultural identity, or to live it if they have already recovered it. They also understand that this is not a favor or a concession, but simply their natural right to be recognized as belonging to a culture that is distinct from the Western culture, a culture in which they have to live their own faith.

  Samuel Ruiz

  Understanding, Identity, Favors

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• Business is the economic engine of our Western culture, and if it could be transformed to truly serve nature as well as ourselves, it could become essential to our rescue.

  Karl-Henrik Robert

  Inspiring, Essentials, Economic

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• Cinema is the culmination of the obsessive, mechanistic male drive in western culture. The movie projector is an Apollonian straight-shooter, demonstrating the link between aggression and art. Every pictorial framing is a ritual limitation, a barred precinct.

  Camille Paglia

  Art, Males, Cinema

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

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• As I have pointed out, it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion, but also of Western morals and Western social idealism.

  Christopher Dawson

  Christian, Lying, Elements

  Christopher Dawson, Gerald J. Russello (1998). “Christianity and European Culture (Selections from the Work of Christopher Dawson)”, p.118, CUA Press

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• I, like all artists in Western cultures, am a shaman...come in the guise of a comic...to heal perception by using...'jokes'.

  Bill Hicks

  Artist, Perception, Comic

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• In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.

  Samuel P. Huntington

  Suffering, Culture, World

  Samuel P. Huntington (1997). “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”, p.310, Penguin Books India

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• The argument now that the spread of pop culture and consumer goods around the world represents the triumph of Western civilization trivializes Western culture. The essence of Western civilization is the Magna Carta, not the Magna Mac. The fact that non-Westerners may bite into the latter has no implications for their accepting the former.

  Samuel P. Huntington

  Essence, Civilization, Culture

  Samuel P. Huntington (1997). “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”, p.58, Penguin Books India

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• [Albert] Hoxie, my Western Civilization professor. I had him in my freshman year and he opened up an extraordinary world to me that I've never forgotten. He used his extensive knowledge of art history to illustrate the development of Western culture and politics.

  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Art, Years, Civilization

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• I love the whole futuristic landscape of dark, rainy neon, the mix of Eastern and Western cultures and the beautiful shots of the flying cars.

  Reggie Watts

  Beautiful, Dark, Flying Cars

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Our [western] culture embraces sex addiction. If I drink too much or rack up credit-card debt or lose the rent in Vegas, that's bad. But if I have many lovers, that's good.

  Susan Cheever

  Sex, Vegas, Addiction

  Source: www.marieclaire.com

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• So he [Shoko Asahara] was insane but managed to convince a couple thousand people that he was enlightened. Western culture, which Japan is now definitely a part of, doesn't have an understanding of what Enlightenment is.

  Brad Warner

  Couple, Japan, People

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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• I think angels definitely offer all the imaginative possibilities that vampires do, and I think they've actually been popular in Western culture for longer than vampires have been. I hope they become a part of the culture again in a new way.

  Danielle Trussoni

  Angel, Thinking, Vampire

  Source: www.elle.com

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• One of the popular views in the liberal circles of the West is that we are actually 'all victims of capitalism'. I disagree. This savage global capitalism is only one of the most terrible bi-products of the dominant Western culture of racism, greed, brutality and unbridled desire to control the world.

  Andre Vltchek

  Circles, Views, Racism

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• We must see ourselves in community with all other people at local, national and global levels. While this may seem superficially easy, it is actually not. Western culture, now globally dominant, has systematically trained us to think and act as though we are separate individuals, often in competition with each other for scarce resources of one sort or another, primarily money, which has be-come the perceived means to all we want and need in life.

  Elisabet Sahtouris

  Mean, Thinking, People

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• For people who must fear for their lives because of their religion or political convictions, the protection provided by Article 16a of the German constitution, the right to asylum, applies. Nobody is questioning that. Irrespective of that, there is immigration that must be regulated, to bring skilled personnel to Germany, for example. We have to establish criteria for that. Their affiliation with the Christian-Western culture should be one of them.

  Horst Seehofer

  Christian, People, Political

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Male domination, and the low and stigmatised status of women, cause teenage girls to engage in punishment of their bodies through eating disorders and self-mutilation. There is increasing evidence that woman-hating Western cultures are toxic to girls and very harmful to their mental health. It is, perhaps, not surprising, therefore, that there seem to be some girls baling out and seeking to upgrade their status.

  Sheila Jeffreys

  Girl, Teenage, Hate

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• The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends - gay and straight, male and female - had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy.

  Peter Tatchell

  Sex, Children, Gay

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• For a long time Christianity has sewn its teachings into the fabric of Western culture. That was a good thing …. But the season of sewing is ending. Now is a time for rending, not for the sake of disengaging from culture or retreating from the public square, but so that our salt does not lose its savor.

  R. R. Reno

  Teaching, Squares, Long

  "A Time to Rend" by R. R. Reno, www.firstthings.com. November 18, 2014.

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• In a lot of Western science fiction, you need some form of conflict, whether it's aliens or robots. I think in Western culture, being more suspicious of science, and hubris, you'll see a lot of fear of creating something that goes out of control.

  Cynthia Breazeal

  Thinking, Creating, Robots

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• In most of the world, poetry has such a different reputation than it does in Western culture.

  Eliza Griswold

  Doe, Different, World

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I serve like a bridge. I go to other cultures, learn, put myself in different situations and learn as much as I can, and then go to Western cultures to give. I'm doing this bridging all the time.

  Marina Abramovic

  Bridges, Other Cultures, Giving

  Source: www.marieclaire.com

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