Ian Buruma Quotes

#1. Isherwood did not so much find himself in Berlin as reinvent himself; Isherwood became a fiction, a work of art.

Ian Buruma

#2. The question, then, for Western companies, as much as for Western governments, is to decide whose side they are on: the Chinese officials who like to define their culture in a paternalistic, authoritarian way, or the large number of Chinese who have their own ideas about freedom.

Ian Buruma

#3. Citizenship of a democratic state means living by the laws of the country. A liberal democracy cannot survive when part of the population believes that divine laws trump those made by man.

Ian Buruma

#4. Islam may soon become the majority religion in countries whose churches have been turned more and more into tourist sites, apartment houses, theatres, and places of entertainment. The French scholar Olivier Roy is right: Islam is now a European religion.

Ian Buruma

#5. To isolate the revolutionary ideologues and their killers we must gain the trust of the majority of Muslims, this can only happen if they are treated as equal citizens, not just in theory, and have access to decent education and jobs.

Ian Buruma

#6. Anti-Americanism may indeed have grown fiercer than it was during the cold war. It is a common phenomenon that when the angels fail to deliver, the demons become more fearsome.

Ian Buruma