Western Quotes - Page 4

• It is a fact that all the ballet's fundamental dance steps are derived from the folk dances of Western Europe.

  Ninette de Valois

  Dance, Europe, Fundamentals

  "Ninette de Valois: An Idealist Without Illusions".

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• Women over fifty already form one of the largest groups in the population structure of the western world. As long as they like themselves, they will not be an oppressed minority. In order to like themselves they must reject trivialization by others of who and what they are. A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.

  Germaine Greer

  Girl, Order, Land

  "The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause". Book by Germaine Greer, 1991.

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• In the West, people pride themselves on being the defenders of democratic rights and the champions of freedom. But if the Western world really cares for the benevolence of the whole world, it will have to turn to introspection.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Yoga, Pride, Rights

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• O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
  Thro' the clear windows of the morning, turn
  Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
  Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!
  
  The hills tell each other, and the listening
  Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turned
  Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth,
  And let thy holy feet visit our clime.
  
  Come o'er the eastern hills, and let our winds
  Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste
  Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls
  Upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee.

  William Blake

  Morning, Spring, Eye

  William Blake (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of William Blake (Illustrated)”, p.18, Delphi Classics

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• Today we are in a situation in which the free movement of people can have enormous, monumental dimensions, and I don't think that any country in Western Europe or in America can any longer adopt the idea of totally free movement of people. I t would simply overwhelm their social facilities, their societies and create migratory dynamics on the scales of tens and tens of millions of people. That simply is not practical.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Country, Thinking, Europe

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Western liberal humanism is not something that comes naturally to us: like an appreciation of art or poetry, it has to be cultivated. Humanism is itself a religion without God-not all religions, of course, are theistic. Our ethical secular ideal has it's own disciplines of mind and heart and gives people the means of finding faith in the ultimate meaning of human life that were once provided by the more conventional religions.

  Karen Armstrong

  Appreciation, Art, Mean

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• In the Western tradition, we have focused on teaching as a skill and forgotten what Socrates knew: teaching is a gift, learning is a skill.

  Peter Drucker

  Teaching, Skills, Forgotten

  Peter F. Drucker (1999). “Adventures of a Bystander”, p.81, Transaction Publishers

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• Practically any Western has a homesteader in trouble, and a mysterious rider shows up off the range, solves the problem over two or three days, and then rides off into the sunset.

  Lee Child

  Sunset, Two, Three

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• If our country's choice is to be a Great Power, Russia will be the great power not because of the nuclear potential, not because of faith in God or president, or western investments but thanks to the labor of the nation, faith in Knowledge and Science and thanks to the maintenance and development of scientific potential and education.

  Zhores Alferov

  God, Education, Knowledge

  "Zhores I. Alferov - Biographical". www.nobelprize.org. 2000.

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• Answered prayers cover the field of providential history as flowers cover western prairies.

  Theodore L. Cuyler

  Prayer, Flower, Fields

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert (p. 474), 1895.

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• I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation.

  Albert Hofmann

  Spiritual, Reality, Our World

  "LSD : My Problem Child" by Albert Hofmann, (Foreword), 1980.

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• They are constantly trying to drive us into a corner because we have an independent position, because we maintain it and because we tell it like it is and don't engage in hypocrisy. But there is a limit to everything. And with Ukraine, our Western partners have crossed the line, playing the bear and acting irresponsibly and unprofessionally.

  Vladimir Putin

  Powerful, Independent, Ukraine

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