Westerners Quotes

• This, I believe, is the great Western truth: that each of us is a completely unique creature and that, if we are ever to give any gift to the world, it will have to come out of our own experience and fulfillment of our own potentialities, not someone else's.

  Joseph Campbell

  Believe, Unique, Giving

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.186, Anchor

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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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• There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven people indifferent to their kids' true interests. For their part, many Chinese secretly believe that they care more about their children and are willing to sacrifice much more for them than Westerners, who seem perfectly content to let their children turn out badly. I think it's a misunderstanding on both sides. All decent parents want to do what's best for their children. The Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that.

  Amy Chua

  Mother, Children, Believe

  "But Will It All Make 'Tiger Mom' Happy?" by Janet Maslin, www.nytimes.com. January 19, 2011.

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• The Westerner is less a person than a continuing adaptation. The West is less a place than a process.

  Wallace Stegner

  West, Adaptation, Process

  Wallace Earle Stegner (1995). “Where the bluebird sings to the lemonade springs: living and writing in the West”, Random House Value Pub

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• The Indian may seem poor to we rich Westerners but in matters of the spirit it is we who are the paupers and they who are millionaires.

  Mark Twain

  Matter, May, Spirit

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• How strange that excision – female circumcision, with several languages using the same term for both kinds of mutilation – of little girls should revolt the westerner but excite no disapproval when it is performed on little boys. Consensus on the point seems absolute. But ask your interlocutor to think about the validity of this surgical procedure, which consists of removing a healthy part of a nonconsenting child’s body on nonmedical grounds – the legal definition of… mutilation.

  Michel Onfray

  Girl, Children, Boys

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• Liberty is not the unique right of Americans or even Westerners, but is mankind's right.

  Virginia Foxx

  Unique, Liberty, Mankind

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• Unfortunatelymost westerners form their opinions of Africa based on the reporting and news in their own countries

  Louise Mushikiwabo

  Country, News, Opinion

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• When I'm wandering around the Himalayas, most of the people that I see are Westerners from Germany, California, or the Netherlands, who are wearing sandals, Indian smocks, and are in search of enlightenment, antiquity, peace, and all the things they can't get in the west. Most of the people they meet are Nepali villagers in Lee jeans, Reeboks, and Madonna T-shirts who are looking for the paradise that they associate with Los Angeles - a paradise of material prosperity and abundance.

  Pico Iyer

  Jeans, California, People

  Source: scottlondon.com

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• Westerners think that all that is negative and positive is only caused from outside of themselves. They materialize and externalize their experiences, never understanding the connection between outer and inner phenomena or interdependent phenomena, looking for explanations only from objects through nihilist habit instead of from the subjective experience of their own minds.

  Thinley Norbu

  Thinking, Understanding, Mind

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• Again and again, when Westerners are perceived as denigrating Muhammad, the Koran, or Islam, Islamists demonstrate, riot or kill.

  Daniel Pipes

  Islam, Muhammad, Riot

  "A Muhammad cartoon a day" by Daniel Pipes, www.foxnews.com. September 21, 2012.

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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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• Istanbul, a universal beauty where poet and archeologist, diplomat and merchant, princess and sailor, northerner and westerner screams with same admiration. The whole world thinks that this city is the most beautiful place on earth.

  Edmondo De Amicis

  Beautiful, Princess, Thinking

  "Constantinople". Book by Edmondo De Amicis, 1877.

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• Any Westerner can now buy a Koran for a dollar and burn it, while any Muslim with a platform can transform that act into a fighting offense. As passions rise on both sides of the divide, Western provocateurs and Islamist hotheads have found each other, as confrontations occur with increasing frequency.

  Daniel Pipes

  Passion, Fighting, Dollars

  "A Muhammad cartoon a day" by Daniel Pipes, www.foxnews.com. September 21, 2012.

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• Westerners know the difference between a talker and the real deal. If Rick Perry wasn't right to be governor of Texas, why should he be president?

  Dick Cheney

  Real, Differences, Texas

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• The Westerners have lost the vision of heaven, they go hunting for the pure spirit in the belly. The pure soul takes not color and scent from the body, and Communism has nothing to do save with the body.

  Muhammad Iqbal

  Hunting, Color, Heaven

  Muhammad Iqbal (2012). “Javid-Nama (RLE Iran B)”, p.53, Taylor & Francis

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• Human beings by nature want happiness and do not want suffering. With that
  feeling everyone tries to achieve happiness and tries to get rid of suffering, and everyone has the basic right to do this. In this way, all here are the same, whether rich or poor, educated or uneducated, Easterner or Westerner, believer or non-believer, and within believers whether Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and so on. Basically, from the viewpoint of real human value we are all the same.

  Dalai Lama

  Christian, Buddhist, Real

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• Ultimately, there is no compromise. Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not.

  Daniel Pipes

  Civilization, Comeback, Insult

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• Pres. Lyndon Johnson was a middle-aged man of smalltown America, both a Westerner and a Southerner, and except where politics had demonstrably forced his growth-as on the question of civil rights-he functioned like most men, as a product of his background.

  Tom Wicker

  Character, Men, Rights

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• I believe no-one can insult you without your permission. Shilpa Shetty has paid the price for trying to desperately seek the approval of the West. It is pathetic how we can go on bended knees and lick the boots of Westerners in an effort to be part of their world.

  Mahesh Bhatt

  Believe, Insults You, Effort

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• And I managed to arrange to get some research support and to stay in Hong Kong for another year and a half, interviewing people coming out of China, both Westerners and Chinese. And that was my first real research study on thought reform or so-called brainwashing.

  Robert Jay Lifton

  Real, Years, People

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• I created 'The Westerner' because of anger - anger at never-miss sheriffs, always-right marshalls, whitewashed gunfighters ... anger at TV's quick-draw tin gods who stand behind a tin star or ten cents' worth of righteous anger and justify their skill and slaughter with a self-conscious grin or a minute's worth of bad philosophy.

  Sam Peckinpah

  Stars, Philosophy, Self

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• So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us.

  Derrick Jensen

  Rocks, Views, Rivers

  Derrick Jensen, Aric McBay (2011). “What We Leave Behind”, p.274, Seven Stories Press

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• The trouble with Westerners is that they want to witness their own enlightenment.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Enlightenment, Want, Trouble

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• A businessman admits that he 'let go' an employee because he was a Sunni Muslim. You simply have to look after yourself, he explains. I am shocked, like a good Westerner should be.

  Robert Fisk

  Letting Go, Looks, Should

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