Ayn Rand
Philosopher, Novelist
"Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth."
Western Culture quotes
Western Culture
44 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Muhammad Abduh
Islamic Scholar, Reformer
"I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam."
Lauryn Hill
Singer, Songwriter
"I had to confront my fears and master my every demonic thought about inferiority, insecurity, or the fear of being black, young, and gifted in this Western culture."
Bell Hooks
Author, Feminist, Social Activist
"Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels."
Desmond Tutu
Theologian, Activist
"The pressure to succeed has a lot to do with why people overstep the line. It is a peculiar weakness of western culture where we have made a fetish of success."
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Western Culture quotes (page 1 of 3)
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"I, like all artists in Western cultures, am a shaman...come in the guise of a comic...to heal perception by using...'jokes'."
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"The indigenous peoples understand that they have to recover their cultural identity, or to live it if they have already recovered it. They also understand that this is not a favor or a concession, but simply their natural right to be recognized as belonging to a culture that is distinct from the Western culture, a culture in which they have to live their own faith."
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"One cannot fail to observe a crushing irony: the gospel of relativistic tolerance is perhaps the most “evangelistic” movement in Western culture at the moment, demanding assent and brooking no rivals."
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"It is not for us . . . to send out missionaries to foreign peoples; it is our task to build up our own Western culture."
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"Istanbul is a vast place. There are very conservative neighbourhoods, there are places that are upper class, Westernised, consuming Western culture."
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"Especially for those of us living in the Western culture, death to a large extent is still a taboo subject. It's considered something dreadful that shouldn't be happening. It's usually denied. The fact of death is not faced. What we don't realize in Western culture is that death has a redemptive dimension."
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"They [the Templars] had read Avicenna, and they were not ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you live alongside a tolerant, mystical, libertine culture for two centuries without succumbing to its allure, particularly when you compared it to Western culture, which was crude, vulgar, barbaric, and Germanic?"
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"If western culture is shown to be rich it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to "dissolve" harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind."
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"Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning."
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"Probably all cultures, certainly Western culture, always have been violent."
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