William Pfaff Quotes

• The accounts that history presents have to be paid. Past has to be reconciled with present in the life of a nation. History is an insistent force: the past is what put us where we are. the past cannot be put behind until it is settled with.

  William Pfaff

  Past, Force, Behinds

  "Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, Chapter 1, Dead Stars, p. 3, 1989.

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• Our culture is teleological-it presumes purposive development and a conclusion.

  William Pfaff

  Culture, Development, Conclusion

  "Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, 1989.

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• It is one of the perceptual defects of Western government and press to assign Western-style motives to what people do in non-Western societies, as if these are universally relevant.

  William Pfaff

  Government, People, Style

  "Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, Chapter 5, Nationalism, p. 147, 1989.

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• Foreign policy deals across time as well as space.

  William Pfaff

  Space, Foreign Policy, Deals

  "Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, ch. 5, Nationalism, p. 146, 1989.

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• The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.

  William Pfaff

  Answers, Problem, Found

  "Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, ch. 2, The Challenge of Europe, p. 28, 1989.

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• The truth is that history constantly presents new problems in the guise of old.

  William Pfaff

  Problem, Truth Is, Guise

  "Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, Chapter 5, Nationalism, p. 155, 1989.

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• The center holds; passion falls away. That is what happened ideologically in Western Europe over recent years.

  William Pfaff

  Fall, Passion, Years

  "arbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, Chapter 2, The Challenge of Europe, p. 63, 1989.

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• But Americans are different from everyone else in the world - except the Canadians, and Americans are more different from the Canadians than they often think.

  William Pfaff

  Thinking, Different, World

  "Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, Chapter 2, The Challenge of Europe, p. 52, 1989.

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• The moral spectacle of capitalism still offends, as does American capitalism's implacable insistence that the market determine value even in the political, intellectual, and artistic spheres.

  William Pfaff

  Political, Intellectual, Spheres

  "Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, Chapter 2, The Challenge of Europe, p. 31, 1989.

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• We Americans really seem to be the only truly non-socialist economy on earth.

  William Pfaff

  Socialist Economy, Earth, Seems

  "Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, ch. 2, The Challenge of Europe, p. 27, 1989.

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• Europeans believe in democracy - or, at least, in republican government - but they have considered the alternatives, and continue to do so, and that scandalizes Americans.

  William Pfaff

  Believe, Government, Democracy

  "Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, Chapter 2, The Challenge of Europe, p. 23, 1989.

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• For four hundred years European civilization has dominated the world - for better or for worse. It is convenient, and flattering, for Americans to assume that this is all over; but it very rash to do so.

  William Pfaff

  Years, Civilization, World

  "Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, Chapter 2, The Challenge of Europe, p. 21, 1989.

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• America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of it's exhausted ideas.

  William Pfaff

  Ideas, America, Exhausted

  "Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, Chapter 1, Dead Stars, p. 11, 1989.

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• The achievement of nationhood is a product not only of time and circumstance but usually of war and suffering as well.

  William Pfaff

  War, Achievement, Suffering

  "Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends". Book by William Pfaff, ch. 5, Nationalism, p. 138., 1989.

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