Quotes & Sayings About Westerners

The Jews caused us a great injustice, the greatest injustice. They have expelled our people, stolen our land, shed our brothers' blood, and are still shedding blood, and there should be no contact between them and us ... we will not agree to meet with them until our problem with the Zionist entity and those Westerners and Christians who support them, is solved. — Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

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

In the West "yes" is "yes" and "no" is "no." But when Arabs hear the word "no" from an American they often take it as an insult. That is because Arabs don't say the word "no" directly. Very often they say "in Shaalah" when they mean "no." In dealing with Westerners, an Arab may say "yes' when they really don't mean it, and that gets them in a lot of trouble with Westerners. — Nonie Darwish

Like any other science, yoga is applicable by people of every clime and time. The theory advanced by certain ignorant writers that yoga is "dangerous" or "unsuitable" for Westerners is wholly false, and has lamentably deterred many sincere students from seeking its manifold blessings. Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevents all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit. Like the healing light of the sun, yoga is beneficial equally to men of the East and to men of the West. The thoughts of most persons are restless and capricious; a manifest need exists for yoga: the science of mind control. — Paramahansa Yogananda

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

Two diametrically opposed points of view concerning religion in the West are to bee seen among Muslims. Some consider all Westerners to be Christians, with the small Jewish minority being of course an exception, and often refer to Westerners as "those Christians" as if the West were of the Middle Ages when the Crusades were carried out and when Western civilization lived in what has been called the Age of Faith. Another group of Muslims hold the opposite view that all Westerners are materialists or agnostics and skeptics and in fact there is no religion among the Westerners. Now it is essential to insist that both of these views are false. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Westerners often define spirituality as denying oneself, being detached from earthly concerns, and being intent on otherworldly values. By contrast, the Hebrews experienced the world of spirit as robust, life-affirming, and this-worldly in character. Such was the "spiritual" orientation of the Hebrews. So-called spirituality did not come by negating the richness of life's experiences or withdrawing from the world. Instead, they affirmed creation by finding a sense of holiness in the here and now. There was no division between the sacred and secular areas of life. It was all God's world, and it was to be enjoyed without a sense of shame or guilt. In Paul's words, "to the pure, all things are pure" (Tit. 1:15). As trustees and stewards of God's world, human beings were to live within it and use it in accord with divine directives. — Marvin R. Wilson

Only a few hardy Westerners learn to speak Thai and even fewer learn to read it. At first glance it seems impossible and on second glance one would much rather not. The alphabet has forty-six wiggly consonants and thirty-one vowels, some of which are not visible to Western eyes. The language is a mixture of Pali, Sanskrit, Cambodian, and is of the Sino-Tibetan family and it seems to embrace the rules of all even when they conflict. King Rama Khamheng devised the alphabet in the thirteenth century and the writing shows the effect of having been born full-blown of kingly whim. — Carol Hollinger

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

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

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

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

There's a spirit to the western people, that is unique in the world. — Nikolas Schreck

Thai food ain't about simplicity. It's about the juggling of disparate elements to create a harmonious finish. Like a complex musical chord it's got to have a smooth surface but it doesn't matter what's happening underneath. Simplicity isn't the dictum here, at all. Some westerners think it's a jumble of flavours, but to a Thai that's important, it's the complexity they delight in. — David

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

That propensity of lifting every problem from the plane of the understandable by means of some sort of mystic expression, is very Russian. I knew her well enough to have discovered her scorn for all the practical forms of political liberty known to the western world. I suppose one must be a Russian to understand Russian simplicity, a terrible corroding simplicity in which mystic phrases clothe a naive and hopeless cynicism. I think sometimes that the psychological secret of the profound difference of that people consists in this, that they detest life, the irremediable life of the earth as it is, whereas we westerners cherish it with perhaps an equal exaggeration of its sentimental value. But this is a digression indeed ... — Joseph Conrad

There is no greater example in apologetics than the apostle Paul speaking at Mars Hill. The irony of the talk Paul gave is in the difference in reaction the Easterner has when reading Paul's address to that of a Westerner. The Easterner is thrilled at how the apostle wove the message starting from where the listeners were to bring them to where he was in his thinking. The average Westerner is quick to point out that few of his hearers responded. Such an attitude says volumes about why the church in the West has been so intellectually weak. To those in the West, the bigger the number of respondents, the more replicated the technique. The bigger the statistic, the greater the success. Westerners are enamored by size, largesse, number of hands raised, and so on. When the sun has set on these reports, we seem rather dismayed when statistics show the quality of the life of the believer is no different from that of the unbeliever. — Ravi Zacharias

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

One day, The road came. The road brought with it beer and cigarettes. The road brought Coca-Cola and disposable razors. The road brought all the wonderful things that we westerners know and hold close. But where did the road go? A few of the younger men decided to find out. They rode a buffalo cart along the road until they came to a town and then a train station. They hid in a bunch of rice sacks and took the train to the city, to the lights, to the jobs. There was this thing called money, with it you could buy stuff. You could gamble, drink, and be merry. After a period of two years, one of the young men returned to the village driving a new car. He showed the villagers all the beautiful things that he had bought. He said that there was work for everyone in the cities. He took another young man and two young women with him. They were pretty in a rural way and very hungry for money. Money was good. They liked it. It was a great adventure. — James A. Newman

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

...the modern bias in contemporary Western scholarship (which has spread to the rest of the world as well) insists upon focusing all attention on the formation of the modern world and 'modernity.' By directing attention to a time period rather than to a region, Western scholars can place the West at the center of any discussion, and subordinate backward Asia to Western history, without explicitly condemning Asian cultures and polities or arguing for a narrowly Eurocentric view of the world. Nevertheless, modern history is effectively a racist pursuit that not only elevates white Westerners above all others, but also actively denigrates Asian history. — Peter A. Lorge

Westerners prefer sex toys so they can avoid playing mind games with each other. Conditioned by capitalism, they cannot share anything. They must hoard everything from their sins to their thoughts to their genitals. The sexual situation in the West is sorrowful nowadays, and that's why a country like Vietnam is the answer. — Linh Dinh

Like most people, most Westerners anyway, I have a sneaking suspicion I am immortal. — Mary Cantwell

Westerners, more than most Asians, are prone to feelings of fear, self-hatred, and unworthiness. — Jack Kornfield

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

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

Why do people often feel bad in good environments and good in bad environments? Why did Mother Teresa think that affluent Westerners often seemed poorer than the Calcutta poor, the poorest of the poor? The paradox comes to pass because the impoverishments and enrichments of a self in a world are not necessarily the same as the impoverishments and enrichments of an organism in an environment. — Walker Percy

Many well-meaning Dutch people have told me in all earnestness that nothing in Islamic culture incites abuse of women, that this is just a terrible misunderstanding. Men all over the world beat their women, I am constantly informed. In reality, these Westerners are the ones who misunderstand Islam. The Quaran mandates these punishments. It gives a legitimate basis for abuse, so that the perpetrators feel no shame and are not hounded by their conscience of their community. I wanted my art exhibit to make it difficult for people to look away from this problem. I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that Islam is peace and tolerance. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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

Westerners have aggressive problem-solving minds; Africans experience people. — Kenneth Kaunda

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

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

A month before the Treasure Fleet's maiden voyage, at the age of thirty-four, Zheng He commissioned an epitaph inscribed on a stone pillar over his father's grave in Yunnan province. He worshiped his father, who had died in battle. The epitaph, one of only three known testimonials from the admiral, described his father's character:

'He was content as an ordinary commoner, but he was brave and decisive in his ordinary life. There was no one in this community who did not look up to him. When he encountered the unfortunate, including widows, orphans, and others with no one to rely on, he routinely offered protection and aid. He cherished the bestowal of extraordinary favours. By nature, he was fond of doing good.'

This revelation of a softer version of manhood as the ideal in much of Asia provided another piece of the answer to the question of how Westerners came to perceive Asians as less masculine. — Alex Tizon

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

Until the arrival of Spanish troops in 1920, Chefchaouen had been visited by just three Westerners. Two were missionary explorers: Charles de Foucauld, a Frenchman who spent just an hour in the town in 1883, disguised as a Jewish rabbi, and William Summers, an American who was poisoned by the townsfolk here in 1892. The third, in 1889, was the British journalist Walter Harris, whose main impulse, as described in his book, Land of an African Sultan, was "the very fact that there existed within thirty hours' ride of Tangier a city in which it was considered an utter impossibility for a Christian to enter". Thankfully, Chefchaouen today is more welcoming towards outsiders, and a number of the Medina's newer guesthouses now include owners hailing from Britain, Italy and the former Christian enemy, Spain. — Daniel Jacobs

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

I say fuck marriage, but we can do it for these westerners and explain it to the gods later. — Darnell Lamont Walker

I am rich, thank you very much. And you are excused for being shortsighted. It is Americans, you British, and all the other Westerners who think they know what's right and what's wrong, who make money from the sale of heroin and opium with one hand, and yet pay mullahs to preach that growing poppies is against the Koran with the other." He laughed. "Hypocrites all! — Deborah Rodriguez

Chen pointed to the cub. "There's your brute." Then he pointed to the pups. "And there's your domestication. For the most part, Westerners are descendants of barbarian, nomadic tribes such as the Teutons and the Anglo-Saxons. They burst out of the primeval forest like wild animals after a couple of thousand years of Greek and Roman civilization, and sacked ancient Rome. They eat steak, cheese, and butter with knives and forks, which is how they've retained more primitive wildness than the traditional farming races. Over the past hundred years, domesticated China has been bullied by the brutish West. It's not surprising that for thousands of years the Chinese colossus has been spectacularly pummeled by tiny nomadic peoples. — Jiang Rong

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

American and British forces reached none of the bloodlands and saw none of the major killing sites. It is not just that American and British forces saw none of the places where the Soviets killed, leaving the crimes of Stalinism to be documented after the end of the Cold War and the opening of the archives. It is that they never saw the places where the Germans killed, meaning that understanding of Hitler's crimes has taken just as long. The photographs and films of German concentration camps were the closest that most westerners ever came to perceiving the mass killing. Horrible though these images were, they were only hints at the history of the bloodlands. They are not the whole story; sadly, they are not even an introduction. — Timothy Snyder

Generalization is the biggest challenge that must be dealt with if we are to create spaces for constructive dialogue where muslims feel they are welcomed. This is equally true with regards to Westerners! Not all Westerners are against muslims, and not all terrorist attacks in the West are linked to Islamic jihadists. — Widad Akreyi

A person's native tongue influences the way he or she perceives music. The same succession of notes may sound different depending on the language the listener learned growing up.12 As evidence, speakers of tonal languages including Mandarin are more likely than Westerners to have perfect pitch. In one study, 92 percent of Mandarin speakers who began the music lessons at or before the age of five had perfect pitch compared to 8 percent of English speakers with comparable music training. — Ken Robinson

To Muslims, I repeat that Islam is a great and noble religion but that all Muslims and Muslim majority societies did not in the past and do not now live up to this nobleness: critical reflection is required about faithfulness to our principles, our outlook on others, on cultures, freedom, the situation of women, and so on. Our contradictions and ambiguities are countless. To Westerners, I similarly repeat that the undeniable achievements of freedom and democracy should not make us forget murderous "civilizing missions," colonization, the destructive economic order, racism, discrimination, acquiescent relations with the worst dictatorships, and other failings. Our contradictions and ambiguities are countless. I am equally demanding and rigorous with both universes. — Tariq Ramadan

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

Outside, milling under the ubiquitous gaze of security cameras, are bright splashes of colorful souls wearing crystals, beads, and Native American Indian paraphernalia; middle-aged academics with "Erowid" drug website t-shirts; and passengers that give you that odd conspiratorial smile that says, "yes, we are here for the conference." And here we are chowing down on McDonalds and donut King, getting our last hits of civilization before hitting the jungle city of Iquitos and shamanic boot camp. It feels like some whacked-out reality TV show, a generational snapshot of a new psychedelic wave just before it breaks. Bright-eyed Westerners about to die and be reborn in the humid jungles of Peru, drinking the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca ... — Rak Razam

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

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

Westerners think that all that is negative and positive is only caused from outside of themselves. They materialize and externalize their experiences, never understanding the connection between outer and inner phenomena or interdependent phenomena, looking for explanations only from objects through nihilist habit instead of from the subjective experience of their own minds. — Thinley Norbu

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

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

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

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

It seems more than a little patronizing for Westerners to lament the loss of the good old days when life in the Khumbu was so much simpler and more picturesque. Most of the people who live in this rugged country seem to have no desire to be severed from the modern world or the untidy flow of human progress. The last thing Sherpas want is to be preserved as specimens in an anthropological museum. — Jon Krakauer

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

Westerners often laud their children as 'talented' or 'gifted', while Asian parents highlight the importance of hard work. And in fact, research performed by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has found that the way parents offer approval affects the way children perform, even the way they feel about themselves. — Amy Chua

Many Westerners see follow-through and reliability as the most critical factor in how they calculate the trustworthiness of another individual. In some other cultures, who you know and how you're related to other individuals is the most important variable. And for others, it may be as much about your reputation and what others have said about you. — David Livermore

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

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

With few exceptions, democracy has not brought good government to new developing countries ... What Asians value may not necessarily be what Americans or Europeans value. Westerners value the freedoms and liberties of the individual. As an Asian of Chinese cultural backround, my values are for a government which is honest, effective and efficient. — Lee Kuan Yew

The economic egalitarianism of the liberal ideology implies ... the reduction of Westerners to hunger and poverty. — James Burnham

God's voice has been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while the educated Westerners' access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just a book — Wm. Paul Young

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

One of the most popular genital surgeries is labia minora reduction. When a similar procedure is performed on healthy girls in some African countries as a coming-of-age rite to control their sexuality, Westerners denounce it as genital mutilation; in the U.S. of A., it's called cosmetic enhancement. But both procedures are based on misogynist notions of female genitalia as ugly, dirty, and shameful. And though American procedures are generally performed under vastly better conditions (with the benefit of, say, anesthesia and antibiotics), the postsurgical results can be similarly horrific, involving loss of sensation, chronic pain, and infection. — Julia Scheeres

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

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

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

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

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

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

So was it cultural imperialism for Westerners to criticize foot-binding and female infanticide? Perhaps. But it was also the right thing to do. If we believe firmly in certain values, such as the equality of all human beings regardless of color or gender, then we should not be afraid to stand up for them; it would be feckless to defer slavery, torture, foot-binding, honor killings, or genital cutting just because we believe in respecting other faiths or cultures. — Nicholas D. Kristof And Sheryl WuDunn

So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us. — Derrick Jensen

I just think you Westerners should take over this country if you are so smart. — Pierre Trudeau

Fraud in the insurance industry is calculated to be $100 billion to $300 billion a year, a cost that gets passed directly to consumers in the form of higher premiums. All told, combined public- and private-sector fraud costs every household in the United States probably around $5,000 a year - or roughly the equivalent of working four months at a minimum-wage job. A hunter-gatherer community that lost four months' worth of food would face a serious threat to its survival, and its retribution against the people who caused that hardship would be immediate and probably very violent. Westerners — Sebastian Junger

The speech fascinated him. His ear caught the rhythm of it and he noted their idioms and worked some of them into his patter. He had found the reason behind the peculiar, drawling language of the old carny hands - it was a composite of all the sprawling regions of the country. A language which sounded Southern to Southerners, Western to Westerners. It was the talk of the soil and its drawl covered the agility of the brains that poured it out. It was a soothing, illiterate, earthy language. — William Lindsay Gresham

Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow- minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handicap him with the label of any section. — O. Henry

When we westerners pray we join our hands, close our eyes, kneel, hunch up and put our hands over our faces to close up our bodies. Our God is inside us, his universe inside our heads. When Orthodox Christians pray they keep their eyes open. They hold their heads up and open up their senses to the universe. Their God is outside in a real world. — John Mole

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

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

This may seem labouring the obvious, but in Japan one meets intelligent people who claim that 'logic' is something invented in the West to allow Westerners to win discussions. Indeed, the belief is widespread that the Japanese can as happily do without logic now as they supposedly have for centuries past. — Karel Van Wolferen

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

In many other cultures, and certainly in the Eastern world, there's great value put on being, contemplating, and even withdrawing from the world at certain times or for certain periods of time. But we don't really have that in our culture, so it's difficult for many Westerners to learn how to sit down or lie down and just be quiet without going to sleep. We're just not trained to do it. — Shakti Gawain

The roots of our grief coil so deeply into loss that death has come
to live with us like a family member who makes you happy by avoiding
you, but who is still one of the family. Our anger is a rage that
Westerners cannot understand. Our sadness can make the stones
weep. And the way we love is no exception — Susan Abulhawa

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

As historian Gary Ferguson writes, "while livestock may be the kindling, the real fuel for the burn is that the federal government is behind the project. . . . Westerners couldn't buy a more perfect evil if they rode straight to hell with a saddlebag full of cash." Or, as one stockman said in 1989, "It's not so much the wolves we're afraid of, it's the wolf managers. — William R. Lowry

But it is these four heroes, whom I will discuss from time to time in this book, whose poems, novels, stories, articles, memoirs, and encyclopedias opened my eyes to the soul of the city in which I live. For these four melancholic writers drew their strength from the tensions between the past and the present, or between what Westerners like to call East and West; they are the ones who taught me how to reconcile my love for modern art and western literature with the culture of the city in which I live. — Orhan Pamuk

As she is the senior person in the room, I wait for her to call on me. And, while I am waiting, I should show I am a good listener by keeping both my voice and my body quiet. In China, we often feel Westerners speak up so much in meetings that they do this to show off, or they are poor listeners. Also, I have noticed that Chinese people leave a few more seconds of silence before jumping in than in the West. You Westerners practically speak on top of each other in a meeting. — Erin Meyer

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

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

Too soon for dinner with the parents?" I teased. "You really didn't have to feel obligated to stay, but Lil does cook some amazing Indian food."

Gabriel just kissed the back of my hand and smiled slyly. "What is it you Westerners say? This isn't my first rodeo, darling!" He mocked tipping a hat.

"Well that may be true, but this is a very different kind of bull," I retorted, almost jealous. "And how many rodeos exactly have you been to, sir? — Tania Penn

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

Have you ever noticed there's no twilight in Africa? [...] It must affect the way the psyche develops. I think it makes people here stronger. No gentle twilight to ease them into the darkness. Maybe it's twilight that makes Westerners so sentimental. They can sit on their porches and watch day recede as night approaches. It gives them time to consider what they're going to lose. It's like dying slowly versus being shot. — Tucker Malarkey

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

Osama bin Laden did not attack on September 11 because there was a dearth of American diplomats willing to talk with him in the Hindu Kush. He did not think America denied its Muslim citizens the right to worship freely. He did not think his native Saudi Arabia was impoverished or short of lebensraum. Instead, he recognized that a series of Islamic terrorist assaults against U.S. interests over two decades had met with what he would judge as insignificant reprisals. And he therefore concluded, in rather explicit and public fashion, that the supposedly decadent Westerners would never fight, whatever the provocation - — Victor Davis Hanson

We are living in a culture that if you criticize immorality you could be branded as a "bigot". I am going to lose a lot of support just by saying this. I am not a politician and I am not running a popularity contest. My job is to defend our world from Islam. You asked why the westerners convert to Islam and I must tell the truth as I see it. If that offends anyone, let him be offended. — Ali Sina

I am a Westerner of Westerners! — Taylor Caldwell

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

This is our country. He was rejecting Adrian's offer of help. It was this that had stung so much, the idea he was neither wanted nor needed. It had simply never occurred to him.
Attila. The man is right, of course. People here don't need therapy so much as hope. But the hope has to be real- Attila's warning to Adrian. I fall down, I get up. Westerners Adrian has met despise the fatalism. But perhaps it is the way people have found to survive. — Aminatta Forna

This scene was little more than a somewhat hollow ceremonial gesture. The real work of the conference had already begun, by a far smaller, more elite, and far less disparate set of individuals. All were white Westerners of elite backgrounds with more congruent temperaments and, as it turned out, goals. The first unofficial meetings between the leaders of the Big Four peacemakers - dubbed the Supreme Council - and their aides had been taking place for a week in a smaller chamber in the same building, and the maneuverings were afoot. It was nine weeks since the armistice — David A. Andelman

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