Quotes About Westerners

#1. 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

#2. Our family has made its livelihood from the land, digging trenches for hundreds of miles cross-country. You could say this is a real paradox, to destroy the land, yet love it at the same time. This is a typical story of Westerners, how we build community through change.

Terry Tempest Williams

#3. Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners ... California Chinese, Boston Irish, Wisconsin German, yes, Alabama Negroes, have more in common than they have apart ... The American identity is an exact and provable thing.

John Steinbeck

#4. 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

#5. A youth with wings are the assurance of our nation's future. We must start to work right away and make progress so that; if one day Westerners leave their footprints on the moon, we shall place a Turkish one among those.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

#6. The statements of certain western officials show that contrary to their absurd claims, westerners are disqualified, and impetuous, lacking any cultural background.

Hamid-Reza Assefi

#7. I've almost never seen in China what Westerners would consider a fair fight. Somebody always pulls out a meat cleaver or picks up a brick to smash your head in. Or they simply gang up on you, like the cops were presently doing.

Rudy Kong

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

Louise Mushikiwabo

#9. Once a sadhu offered me some land that he had, so that I could have an ashram for fellow Westerners. I asked Maharajji about it. He said, "He wants to give you his attachment. It's not a pure gift. If it were pure he'd just give it to you instead of talking about it." (R.D.)

Ram Dass

#10. Incredibly deep research combines with the talents of a fine historian and writer to produce superb narrative history. The true character and relationship of these two iconic westerners emerge to suppress myth and correct more than a century of tomes laden with bad history.

Robert M. Utley

#11. A Buddhist scholar once explained to me that most Westerners mistakenly think that Nirvana is what you arrive at when your suffering is over and only an eternity of happiness stretches ahead. But such bliss would always be shadowed by the sorrow of the past and would therefore be imperfect.

Andrew Solomon

#12. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all
Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.

F Scott Fitzgerald

#13. What made al Qaeda retrieve the doctrine of militant jihad, and Breivik the ideas of crusade and reconquest, is a sense of siege. So, we should help both Westerners and Muslims get rid of that sense by easing their political tensions and by fostering dialogue between them.

Mustafa Akyol

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

Bernard Lewis

#15. Like most people, most Westerners anyway, I have a sneaking suspicion I am immortal.

Mary Cantwell

#16. Very few Westerners, I thought, could tolerate such a way of life- for it would mean having to forgo the luxuries which we had come to think of as necessities.

Jane Goodall

#17. Westerners, more than most Asians, are prone to feelings of fear, self-hatred, and unworthiness.

Jack Kornfield

#18. Oftentimes Westerners don't really understand fully the values of this particular culture. And I think the jury is still out as to whether democracy can really thrive in Iraq.

Katie Couric

#19. 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

#20. I know from my short time in the kingdom that all Saudis worry over Saudi opinion. All Saudis I have met act more relaxed around Westerners.

Jean Sasson

#21. The "Vasco da Gama's era" ends in a nightmare in which men-Westerners and non-Westerners alike-are bewildered by this confusion and the old fancy of the apprenti sorcier becomes tragically actual.

Carlo M. Cipolla

#22. 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

#23. Last night the Taliban offered to release eight Westerners if the U.S. promised not to attack. The State Department declined but thanked the Taliban for the offer, saying it really felt good to laugh again.

Tina Fey

#24. Westerners respect privacy, and they are very competitive in terms of work and personalities. My teammates in China and I can talk about everything. But with my Houston Rockets teammates, even though we're friends, we cannot ask each other about everything.

Yao Ming

#25. It always bothers me when I hear Rwanda's genocide described as a product of "ancient tribal hatreds." I think this is an easy way for Westerners to dismiss the whole thing as a regrettable but pointless bloodbath that happens to primitive brown people.

Paul Rusesabagina

#26. At this camp I had the unique experience of showing all these seasoned Westerners that it was possible to make a fire by the friction of two sticks. This has long been a specialty of mine; I use a thong and a bow as the simplest way.

Ernest Thompson Seton

#27. Two thousand years of monotheistic brainwashing have caused most Westerners to see polytheism as ignorant and childish idolatry. This is an unjust stereotype.

Yuval Noah Harari

#28. The East is very mysterious to Westerners. Even post-Cold War, it's still an unknown entity.

Dylan Moran

#29. I say fuck marriage, but we can do it for these westerners and explain it to the gods later.

Darnell Lamont Walker

#30. Among ourselves (Westerners), the people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forgo ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.

Bertrand Russell

#31. Reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western societies.

Samuel P. Huntington

#32. Indians are sometimes accused of being condescending toward Westerners and of being excessively preachy in their attitude toward other nations. That accusation is sometimes correct.

Gary Weiss

#33. Hindus and Westerners alike see in the meat-eating taboos of India a triumph of morals over appetite. This is a dangerous misrepresentation of cultural processes. Hindu vegetarianism was a victory not of spirit over matter but of reproductive over productive forces.

Marvin Harris

#34. There is indeed something preposterous about well-educated Westerners racing East in search of spiritual enlightenment while Easterners make the opposite pilgrimage seeking education and economic opportunities.

Sam Harris

#35. Companies in the East put a lot more emphasis on human relationships, while those from the West focus on the product, the bottom line. Westerners appear to have more of a need for achievement, while in the East there's more need for affiliation.

Daniel Goleman

#36. The Greek religion explained that diffuse band of light in the night sky as the milk of Hera, squirted from her breast across the heavens, a legend that is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way.

Carl Sagan

#37. The economic egalitarianism of the liberal ideology implies ... the reduction of Westerners to hunger and poverty.

James Burnham

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

Daniel Pipes

#39. Indians are in denial mode and wake up only when foreigners treasure India. They don't seem to know the value and,therefore, don't take pride in their tradition, unlike Westerners who take a lot of pride in theirs, even if there is little to be proud of

Maria Wirth

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

Chogyam Trungpa

#41. Age is a limit we impose upon ourselves. You know, each time you Westerners celebrate your birthday you build another fence around your minds.

Robert Riskin

#42. I interviewed dozens and dozens of African women who had endured more hardship and trauma than most Westerners even read about, and they ploughed on. I often openly cried during interviews, unable to process this violence and hatred towards women I was witnessing.

Lynsey Addario

#43. The Dalai Lama, these days, encourages Westerners not to take up Buddhism, partly because he feels that our roots are deep in other traditions, and we should go deeper into our own traditions rather than just acquiring the surfaces of others.

Pico Iyer

#44. Some Westerners [ ... ] have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise.

Samuel P. Huntington

#45. Long dismissed as children's stories or 'myths' by Westerners, Australian Aboriginal stories have only recently begun to be taken seriously for what they are: the longest continuous record of historic events and spirituality in the world.

Karl-Erik Sveiby

#46. The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other religions were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.

Oliver Stone

#47. In Buddhism we don't really believe in sin and salvation as Westerners would define them. We believe in the limitless possibilities of the present and of future moments.

Frederick Lenz

#48. Part of the resistance of Westerners to becoming patrons is that they react negatively to the idea of participating in a society that is basically built on institutionalized inequality.121

David E. Maranz

#49. Child labour may be distasteful to westerners, but does boycotting goods made with child labour improve or exacerbate the lot of third world children? Trusting the market to regulate may not ultimately be in our interest.

Noreena Hertz

#50. It may be that the best time for Otherness has already passed. Clearly part of the basis for this renaissance has been wealth, especially the unprecedented comfort enjoyed by the vast majority of Westerners since World War II, in which very few of us can even conceive of starving

David Brin

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

Daniel Pipes

#52. Most Westerners today believe in individualism. They believe that every human is an individual, whose worth does not depend on what other people think of him or her.

Yuval Noah Harari

#53. We Westerners will shell out our gold and even lay down our lives for the endangered mountain gorilla," he continued. "But does anyone raise a finger when five million human souls are sent to hell?

Elliott Garber

#54. Westerners who go native with Chinese ideas are called 'eggs' - outside white, inside yellow -, and are often systematically excluded from their expat community's activities, let alone the financial support system.

Thorsten J. Pattberg

#55. I am a Westerner of Westerners!

Taylor Caldwell

#56. There are teachers who say that one of the main obstacles, spiritual obstacles, for westerners is a sense of unworthiness, a self-limiting sense of what's possible for them in a human life.

Roland Merullo

#57. All I can say is that these cult stories are totally untrue, are without any foundation, and trade on a deep bias against Westerners who dare to embrace an Eastern belief-system.

Frederick Lenz

#58. 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

#59. A harem is not a brothel, as so many Westerners erroneously believe. It is merely the women's living quarters. Male relatives can join them
but no male nonrelatives may do so. It is hardly a den of eroticism.

Phyllis Chesler

#60. Westerners have aggressive problem-solving minds; Africans experience people.

Kenneth Kaunda

#61. these merchants of men handle a new variety of human cargo: not hostages but rather migrants. A surreal interdependency, therefore, links the kidnapping of Westerners and the trafficking of migrants.

Loretta Napoleoni

#62. Few Westerners know Iran as well as Robin Wright: her first trip there as a journalist was in 1973, and she has covered every important milestone since, from the Islamic revolution and the hostage crisis to the more recent staring contest with the West over Tehran's nuclear program.

Nancy Gibbs

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

Virginia Foxx

#64. More often than not, Americans and Westerners overestimated the power and capability of the Soviet Union.

Alexander Haig

#65. Although the word Jihad standing by itself means "struggle," what Westerners need to focus on when reading the Hadith regarding Mohammed's Jihad is similar to the focus needed when reading Mein Kampf (My Struggle) by Adolph Hitler.

Walid Shoebat

#66. I lived in Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s. It was, for a Westerner, pretty idyllic. There were the religious police; there were the rules; there were the prayer times. But it was as if we were existing in two separate universes. The Westerners were just allowed to get on with their way of life.

Robert Lacey

#67. A little of this caviar finds its way to the fish restaurants around Istanbul's Taksim Square, but the bulk is sent on to the United Arab Emirates to be enjoyed by wealthy Westerners and Arabs in the preposterous hotels that have set new standards in unnecessary opulence.

Misha Glenny

#68. They were the first Westerners. The spirit of the West, the modern spirit, is a Greek discovery; and the place of the Greeks is in the modern world.

Edith Hamilton

#69. The Dalai Lama acknowledges that he's met Westerners who to some extent are clearly Easterners at heart, and he would never want them not to become Buddhists just because they happened to be born in California.

Pico Iyer

#70. After the 9/11 incidents, Islam has become a big question mark among westerners, especially Americans. The mass media constantly raise the issue of relationship between Islam and terrorism.

Abdolkarim Soroush

#71. It is wholly incomprehensible to think that thousands of years ago God would have felt constrained to speak in a way that would be meaningful only to Westerners several thousand years later. To do so borders on modern, Western arrogance.

Peter Enns

#72. What geography can give all Middle Westerners, along with the fresh water and topsoil, if they let it, is awe for an Edenic continent stretching forever in all directions. Makes you religious. Takes your breath away.

Kurt Vonnegut

#73. Many Indians have told me that the most basic difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that Westerners view the world as dead, and not as filled with speaking, thinking, feeling subjects as worthy and valuable as themselves.

Derrick Jensen

#74. To Westerners, the students at Tiananmen may have given an impression of a solid and energetic consensus against dictatorship and for democracy, but they were an egotistical and fractious lot, riven by disagreements over tactics and money.

Pankaj Mishra

#75. One piece of information that made an impression on her was that individual Chinese lives mattered to the Westerners.

Jung Chang

#76. I just think you Westerners should take over this country if you are so smart.

Pierre Trudeau

#77. 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

#78. Truthfully we were alone only in the ways Westerners speak of being alone in Africa, as if the few hundred locals by whom they are almost always surrounded are part of the landscape, instead of part of humanity.

Alexandra Fuller

#79. There's a spirit to the western people, that is unique in the world.

Nikolas Schreck