Bernard Lewis Quotes

#1. If the conflict is about the size of Israel, then long and difficult negotiations can eventually resolve the problem. But if the conflict is about the existence of Israel, then serious negotiation is impossible.

Bernard Lewis

#2. In medieval times most singers, dancers, and musical performers were, at least in origin, slaves.

Bernard Lewis

#3. The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic Law.

Bernard Lewis

#4. Western technology made slavery unnecessary; Western ideas made it intolerable.

Bernard Lewis

#5. At the moment, the general perception ... is that the United States is an unreliable friend and a harmless enemy.

Bernard Lewis

#6. Those who are unwilling to confront the past will be unable to understand the present and unfit to face the future.

Bernard Lewis

#7. America is harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.

Bernard Lewis

#8. The medieval islamic world offered vastly more freedom than any of its predecessors, its contemporaries and most of its successors

Bernard Lewis

#9. Classical Islamic civilization had long passed its prime when the Mongols arrived on the scene in the thirteenth century, and was already in an advance state of what most historians would call decline.

Bernard Lewis

#10. If westerners cannot legitimately study the history of Africa or the Middle East, then only fish can study marine biology.

Bernard Lewis

#11. The cultivation of cotton and sugar, which the Arabs brought from the East across North Africa and into Spain, most probably entailed some kind of plantation system.

Bernard Lewis

#12. Islam and Islamic values now have a level of immunity from comment and criticism in the Western world that Christianity has lost and Judaism has never had.

Bernard Lewis

#13. Black slaves seem to have cost from two to three hundred dirhams; black eunuchs, at least two or three times as much. Female black slaves were sold at five hundred dirhams or so; trained singing girls or other performers, at ten or even twenty thousand.

Bernard Lewis

#14. 'The rise of christianity as the result of impact of iranian religion on judaism', I don't think is entirely false.

Bernard Lewis

#15. Wholly given up to villainy and debauchery, and ride the steed of perfidy and presumption, and dive into the sea of error and impiety, and are united under the banner of Satan.

Bernard Lewis

#16. Uncertainty may be beneficial in that it invites further research and further thought. But uncertainty disguised as certainty is dangerous.

Bernard Lewis

#17. Islam did not retain any of the Judeo-Christian Bible.

Bernard Lewis

#18. Not being interested in other cultures is the normal state of mankind.

Bernard Lewis

#19. With few exceptions the pietists are assigned a minor role in the creation of the Arab Empire.

Bernard Lewis

#20. The golden age of equal rights in Spain was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam. The myth was invented by Jews in nineteenth-century Europe as a reproach to Christians.

Bernard Lewis

#21. Terrorism requires only a few. Obviously, the West must defend itself by whatever means will be effective. But in devising means to fight the terrorists, it would surely be useful to understand the forces that drive them.

Bernard Lewis