Western Quotes - Page 6

• The Western poet and writer of romance has exactly the same kind of difficulty in comprehending Eastern subjects as you have in comprehending Western subjects.

  Lafcadio Hearn

  Romance, Kind, Poet

  Lafcadio Hearn (2012). “Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn”, p.99, tredition

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• An effective proclamation of the Gospel in contemporary Western society will need to confront directly the widespread spirit of agnosticism and relativism which has cast doubt on reason's ability to know the truth, which alone satisfies the human heart's restless quest for meaning.

  Pope John Paul II

  God, Heart, Doubt

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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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• Her blue eyes sought the west afar,
  For lovers love the western star.

  Walter Scott

  Love, Life, Stars

  Sir Walter Scott (1855). “The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott”, p.31

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• If the Aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it.

  Stanley Marion Garn

  Wisdom, Civilization, Common Sense

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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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• One of the stupidest theories of Western life.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Evolution, Theory, Stupidest

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• The influence (for good or ill) of Plato's work is immeasurable. Western thought, one might say, has been Platonic or anti-Platonic, but hardly ever non-Platonic.

  Karl Popper

  Plato, Hard Work, Science

  Karl Popper (2014). “After The Open Society: Selected Social and Political Writings”, p.190, Routledge

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• One reason which I find particularly fascinating about Israel is this. There is no such thing as a Jewish civilization. There is a Jewish culture, a Jewish religion, but there is no such thing as a Jewish civilization. The Jews were a component basically of two civilizations. In the Western world, we talk about the Judeo-Christian tradition and you talk about the Judeo-Islamic tradition because there were large and important Jewish communities living in the lands of Islam.

  Bernard Lewis

  Community, Islam, Important

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• It is impossible not to feel stirred at the thought of the emotions of man at certain historic moments of adventure and discovery - Columbus when he first saw the Western shore, Pizarro when he stared at the Pacific Ocean, Franklin when the electric spark came from the string of his kite, Galileo when he first turned his telescope to the heavens. Such moments are also granted to students in the abstract regions of thought, and high among them must be placed the morning when Descartes lay in bed and invented the method of co-ordinate geometry.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Morning, Ocean, Adventure

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• Violence is hidden within democratic structures because they are not radically democratic - Western democracy is merely a domestic convenience of consumerism.

  Edward Bond

  Democracy, Literature, Violence

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• Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne, Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific, and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise, Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

  John Keats

  Eye, Men, Islands

  "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" l. 5 (1817)

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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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• Since Western society is deteriorating, it has become overrun with immorality, and God is going to judge it, and destroy it. And the only way the black people caught up in this society can be saved is not to integrate into this corrupt society, but to separate from it, to a land of our own, where we can reform ourselves, lift up our moral standards and try to be godly.

  Malcolm X

  Godly, Land, People

  Malcolm X (2015). “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, p.282, Ballantine Books

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• The kind of pace that you want to use in a Western - just to acknowledge the land in the distance that everyone has to travel, and the way things develop sort of slowly - it's almost the antithetical of what's currently going on in the movies, you know.

  Lawrence Kasdan

  Travel, Distance, Land

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• When I was a kid, if a guy got killed in a western movie I always wondered who got his horse.

  George Carlin

  Movie, Horse, Kids

  George Carlin (2002). “Napalm & Silly Putty”, Hyperion

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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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• There is no western, capitalistic country in which the conditions of the masses have not improved in an unprecedented way.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Country, Way, Mass

  Ludwig Von Mises (2006). “Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow”, p.13, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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