Modern West Quotes

The idea that human beings can make history, that is something quite unique to the modern West. ~ Pankaj Mishra

Prior to modern times, the term 'Islamic' (Islami in Arabic) was almost never used to define the provenance, status, or substance of things. There was no such thing as 'Islamic art', 'Islamic economics', or even 'Islamic law.' ... The encounter with the modern West, however, ultimately changed the status of 'Islamic.' Inasmuch as the rise of the West converted the achievements of Darwin, Descartes, and Hegel from mere English, French, or German achievements into explicitly 'Western' ones, it also engendered the need for a parallel convention for demarcating the non-Western 'other.' The Western provenance of the modern neologism 'Islamic' is perhaps best revealed in its tendency to connote geography and ethnicity. 'Islamic', in other words, connotes not simply that which is related to or a product of Islam as a religion but that which relates to a particularly non-European people in a non-European part of the world. In this capacity, it carries both a descriptive and a prescriptive force... For no modern Muslim nor non-Muslim would include the likes of such Arab Christians as Michel Aflaq or San' Allah Ibrahim among the 'thinkers of Islam.' Rather, in Western parlance, the modern 'Islamic' began as an instrument to demarcate the boundary between the west and a particular set of 'others.' In Muslim hands, it would go on to evolve into a full-blown signifier of normative Islam and a tool for delineating the boundary between it and Islam. Its added utility, moreover, as a mechani ~ Sherman A. Jackson

The first organization structure in the modern West was laid down in the canon law of the Catholic Church eight hundred years ago. ~ Peter Drucker

In India there was a sense of time that does not tick with modern clocks, just as there is a knowledge that is not gained through science and empirical experiments. In the modern West knowledge is of objective, finite particulars in historical time. India recognizes that kind of useful information: it calls it "lower knowledge." Higher knowledge (paravidya) proceeds differently, or rather it doesn't proceed at all but enters history full-blown on the morning of a new creation. ~ Huston Smith

Minor segments of earlier history may have been rescued or 'retrieved' -- e.g. Greek 'democracy,' Aristotle, the Magna Carta, etc. -- but these remain subservient, if not instrumental, to the imperatives of the modern historical narrative and to the progress of 'Western civilization.' African and Asia, in most cases, continue to struggle in order to catch up, in the process not only forgoeing the privilege of drawing on their own traditions and historical experiences that shaped who they were and, partly, who they have become but also letting themselves be drawn into devastating wars, poverty, disease and the destruction of their natural environment. Modernity, whose hegemonic discourse is determined by the institutions and intellectuals of the powerful modern West, has not offered a fair shake to two-thirds of the world's population, who have lost their history and, with it, their organic ways of existence. ~ Wael B. Hallaq

Let's face it. Leftism is the political form of evil. And the left largely controls the modern West. Where, then, does that leave us all? ~ Lawrence Auster

The prevailing ideology of the modern west - which is political economy - is in the doghouse. Having failed to notice atmospheric pollution, the economists then frightened themselves with the sort of financial crisis they said they had abolished. ~ James Buchan

In traditional societies, nature was seen as one's wife, but the modern West turned it into a prostitute. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Chesterton spoke of 'the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal.' It would be hard to sum up liberalism for succinctly. ~ Joseph Sobran

Character determines fate. ~ Meryl Sawyer

The idea that the bumps or depressions on a man's head indicate the presence or absence of certain moral characteristics in his mental equipment is one of the absurdities developed from studies in this field that has long since been discarded by science. The ideas of the phrenologist Gall, however ridiculous they may now seem in the light of a century's progress, were nevertheless destined to become metamorphosed into the modern principles of cerebral localization. ~ Edward Anthony Spitzka

In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus is a vandal. ~ Camille Paglia

We who are living in the west today are fortunate. Freedom has been bequeathed to us. We have not had to carve it out of nothing; we have not had to pay for it with our lives. But it would be a grave mistake to think that freedom requires nothing of us. Each of us has to earn freedom anew in order to possess it. We do so not just for our own sake, but for the sake of our children, so that they may build a better future that will sustain over the world the responsibilities and blessings of freedom. ~ Margaret Thatcher

The Soviet experience was much worse than experts in the West had thought. That discovery had a tremendous impact both on the intellectual community and on the public at large. ~ Milton Friedman

I can confirm by a modern dream the element of prognosis (or precognition) that can be found in an old dream quoted by Artemidorus of Daldis, in the second century A.D.: A man dreamed that he saw his father die in the flames of a house on fire. Not long afterward, he himself died in a phlegmone (fire, or high fever), which I presume was pneumonia. ~ C. G. Jung

The very shaping of history now outpaces the ability of men to orient themselves in accordance with cherished values. Even when they do not panic men often sense that older ways off feeling and thinking have collapsed and that newer beginnings are ambiguous to the point of stasis. ~ C. Wright Mills

[17th-century] Puritans were the first modern parents. Like many of us, they looked on their treatment of children as a test of their own self-control. Their goal was not to simply to ensure the child's duty to the family, but to help him or her make personal, individual commitments. They were the first authors to state that children must obey God rather than parents, in case of a clear conflict. ~ C. Sommerville

A little bit South you've got Macon, Georgia - home of the Allman Brothers, the Marshall Tucker Band and Capricorn Records. And off to west you've got Delta blues. Sprinkle Southern gospel over the top of that, and you're talking about where I came from. I loved all of that music. ~ Travis Tritt

I watched L'eclisse [1962] with Alain Delon and Monica Vitti. Changed my world. What a glamorous and modern film. This is what a genius is - the thing of a genius. The dresses, the tiny heels, the Cardin look, the boys dressed up as Italian gigolos - it was divine, very modern. [ Michelangelo] Antonioni, I loved and I realized: how modern. ~ Manolo Blahnik

The art of phlebotomy originated with bloodletting in 1400 B.C., and the modern clinical lab emerged in the 1960s - and it has not fundamentally evolved since then. You go in, sit down, they put a tourniquet on your arm, stick you with a needle, take these tubes and tubes of blood. ~ Elizabeth Holmes

It seems that a lot of men are confusing being asked not to violate other people's sexual boundaries with being forbidden to participate in basic human activities such as dancing, dating, chatting, walking around, going to work. and telling jokes. ~ Lindy West

A few months ago on a school morning, as I attempted to etch a straight midline part on the back of my wiggling daughter's soon-to-be-ponytailed blond head, I reminded her that it was chilly outside and she needed to grab a sweater.

"No, mama."

"Excuse me?"

"No, I don't want to wear that sweater, it makes me look fat."

"What?!" My comb clattered to the bathroom floor. "Fat?! What do you know about fat? You're 5 years old! You are definitely not fat. God made you just right. Now get your sweater."

She scampered off, and I wearily leaned against the counter and let out a long, sad sigh. It has begun. I thought I had a few more years before my twin daughters picked up the modern day f-word. I have admittedly had my own seasons of unwarranted, psychotic Slim-Fasting and have looked erroneously to the scale to give me a measurement of myself. But these departures from my character were in my 20s, before the balancing hand of motherhood met the grounding grip of running. Once I learned what it meant to push myself, I lost all taste for depriving myself. I want to grow into more of a woman, not find ways to whittle myself down to less.

The way I see it, the only way to run counter to our toxic image-centric society is to literally run by example. I can't tell my daughters that beauty is an incidental side effect of living your passion rather than an adherence to socially prescribed standards. I can't tell my son how t ~ Kristin Armstrong

Ian Rankin's Rebus is the king of modern British crime fiction. He is dour, determined, and constantly falls foul of his seniors. For all this, we root for him. He is eminently loveable, a quixotic hero moving through the darker half of a Jekyll and Hyde Edinburgh. ~ Mark Billingham

He is someone who is involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a fundamental way. Let's start with who Dani Dayan is. He was the former head of one of the main settler councils, the Yesha Council, which is a kind of umbrella organization for settlements in the occupied West Bank. Now, you know, for some countries this might not be an issue, but Brazil has made a point of its policies on the Israeli-Palestinian issue ~ Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

Every day the same things came up; the work was never done, and the tedium of it began to weigh on me. Part of what made English a difficult subject for Korean students was the lack of a more active principle in their learning. They were accustomed to receiving, recording, and memorizing. That's the Confucian mode. As a student, you're not supposed to question a teacher; you should avoid asking for explanations because that might reveal a lack of knowledge, which can be seen as an insult to the teacher's efforts. You don't have an open, free exchange with teachers as we often have here in the West. And further, under this design, a student doesn't do much in the way of improvisation or interpretation.

This approach might work well for some pursuits, may even be preferred--indeed, I was often amazed by the way Koreans learned crafts and skills, everything from basketball to calligraphy, for example, by methodically studying and reproducing a defined set of steps (a BBC report explained how the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had his minions rigorously study the pizza-making techniques used by Italian chefs so that he could get a good pie at home, even as thousands of his subjects starved)--but foreign-language learning, the actual speaking component most of all, has to be more spontaneous and less rigid.

We all saw this played out before our eyes and quickly discerned the problem. A student cannot hope to sit in a class and have a language handed over to ~ Cullen Thomas

There is a fantasy as old as the modern gay rights movement that if all our skins turned lavender overnight, the majority, confounded by our numbers and our diversity, and recognising a few of our faces, would at once let go of prejudice forevermore. ~ Ian McKellen

Krakatoa, spelled "Krakatau" in Indonesian, is a volcano in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. It is also the name of an island group made up of what is left of a larger island, consisting of three volcanic peaks that were destroyed by the catastrophic 1883 eruption. This explosive force was equivalent to 100,000 Hiroshima sized atomic bombs. It was the loudest sound ever heard in modern history and could be heard up to 3,000 miles away. At that time, the explosion caused huge tsunamis which killed more than 36,000 people and sent out shock waves that were recorded worldwide for almost a week. Years later in 1927, "Anak Krakatau" a new island mountain formed in its place and is again the location of volcanic activity. It is considered a part of the Pacific "Ring of Fire. ~ Hank Bracker

I'm with you on measuring this week in letters and the two-day drought we are about to experience. If only there was a way to transport letters faster, through some sort of electronic device that codes messages and sends them through the air. But that's just crazy talk.

Friday from me:

Sending letters through the sky? Like when airplanes attach notes to their tails? I thought they only advertised for going-out-of-business sales. But perhaps our letters would be okay up there as well. I wonder how much they charge per word. ~ Kasie West

If I was on a 'Modern Family' kind of show, and they said, 'You have to say that the burger is $5.55; Have a good day!' ... I could do that! ~ Charlie Puth

Don't tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing. ~ Aaron Sorkin

Courageous parenting does not always involve saying no. Parents also need courage to say yes to the counsel of modern-day prophets. Our Church leaders have counseled us to establish righteous patterns in our homes. Consider five fundamental practices that have the power to fortify our youth: family prayer, family scripture study, family home evening, family dinner together, and regular one-on-one interviews with each child. ~ Larry R. Lawrence

Modern proletarian package: On day one we will work for ten hours in a polluted textile factory, passing the night in a cramped apartment block. On day two we will work for ten hours as cashiers in the local department store, going back to sleep in the same apartment block. On day three we will learn from the native people how to open a bank account and fill out mortgage forms. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

West Ham have committed 13 fouls, but they weren't fouls, they were commitment ~ Ray Wilkins

Thanks to superior organization, the Egyptian armed forces scored a dual victory, on land and sea, over that second alliance. The fleet of the "Peoples of the North" was entirely destroyed and the invasion route through the Delta was cut. At the same time a third coalition of the same white-skinned Indo-Aryans was being assembled, again in Libya, against the Black Egyptian nation. Yet, this was not a racial conflict in the modern sense. To be sure, the two hostile groups were fully conscious of their ethnic and racial differences, but it was much more a question of the great movement of disinherited peoples of the north toward richer and more advanced countries. Ramses III demolished that third coalition as he had destroyed the first two.... As a result of this third victory over the Indo-Aryans, he took an exceptional number of prisoners. ~ Cheikh Anta Diop

As a movement (rather than a preference), the goal of antinatalism is that no humans should have children. What ambassadors, then, are we to send to the Brazilian Amazonian Pirahã people to persuade them to stop reproducing? According, at least, to Professor Daniel Everett, here is a people who have no knowledge of regret, depression or suicide. Are we to enlighten them in order to appease a group of discontented intellectuals in the first world? The Pirahã would appear to be one pocket of humanity to whom the sickness unto death does not apply, and this reveals a crack, which may grow, in the antinatalist edifice. ~ Quentin S. Crisp

I believe I've got the best of both worlds - a modern man with old fashioned values. I'm happy to be a house husband but won't let my wife carry her own bag. ~ Ian Watson

I was getting tired of hearing the complaint, 'My kid could do this,' and 'We don't get it. What's modern art? Blah, blah, blah.' And I wondered what would really happen if you gave people what they wanted, something they always look at. ~ John Baldessari

all adventures involving knowledge and imagination. When Marielle drives crosstown from east to west along Sherbrooke Street in her old Plymouth, aka 'Violet,' it is 'a carousel of history and geography,' it is about straddling grammar and going off to explore the inner recesses of the images and life irrigating the brain. ~ Nicole Brossard

Physicists believe that at the instant of the Big Bang, the universe was in perfect symmetry and there was an equal amount of matter and antimatter. If so, the annihilation between the two would have been perfect and complete, and the universe should be made of pure radiation. Yet here we are, made of matter, which should not be around anymore. Our very existence defies modern physics. ~ Michio Kaku

I am the representative of all the sick people and what they are doing to me is only the worst case right now, but there will be others. I am living on borrowed time anyway. I owe this part of my life to luck and modern medical science. But I can't imagine what the rest of it will be like if they won't let me use medical marijuana. ~ Peter McWilliams

Rope-a-dope boxers and quarterbacks and hockey enforcers continue to shake off concussions on the theory of no blood, no harm. But each concussion effectively softens up the brain and ups the chances of more concussions. After multiple blows, neurons start to die and spongy holes open up; people's personalities then disintegrate, leaving them depressed, diminished, suicidal. Four centuries have passed, but macho modern athletes* might as well trade pads for armor and go joust with ~ Sam Kean

I had an advantage because people would post me on blogs because I had co-signs from Kanye West, Def Jam, and G.O.O.D. Music. Everything I put out, the blogs would put up. When I realized that, I used that to my advantage and helped build my following on my own. ~ Big Sean

There are today many institutions, taken for granted as pillars of the establishment, which owe their existence, or their appearance, in part to Albert. He is regarded as the architect of the modern monarchy; and when his great-great granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, waves to people from Buckingham Palace, she does so standing on the balcony which was Albert's idea. ~ Sarah Ferguson

These modern gramophones are a remarkable invention. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations. ~ Rebecca West