Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
People have multiple identities.
Collective will supplants individual whim
I don't know what will happen 100 years from now.
In 1920, the West ruled huge amounts of the world.
First of all, we haven't always welcomed immigrants.
I don't say that the West is united, I don't suggest that.
We also thought of ourselves in racial and largely ethnic terms.
The core of the American set of beliefs has remained pretty constant.
A lot of people tend to think I'm a dogmatic ideologue, which I'm not.
Except under rare circumstances, I don't write responses to criticism.
Many more people in the world are concerned about sports than human rights.
Partial truths or half-truths are often more insidious than total falsehoods.
The basis of association and antagonism among countries has changed over time.
I think it's hard to talk about the Muslim world and Christian world as blocks.
As far as ideology or political beliefs are concerned, countries are very different.
Well, I think the United States first of all has to recognize the world for what it is.
The great problem there is we have to have the cooperation of those other Asian countries.
Thus, biologically speaking the American people are literally only half an immigrant people.
Both sides are divided and Western countries collaborate with Muslim countries and vice versa.
Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.
Many of the most difficult questions concerning the role of ethnic minorities centers on language.
Fundamentalist tendencies and movements existed, so far as I know, in all societies and civilizations.
Our relationship with Mexico in this regard is unique for us, and in many respects unique in the world.
Expectations should not always be taken as reality; because you never know when you will be disappointed.
Maybe Iraq will come back and become the dominant power among Arab countries. That seems to me as conceivable.
Mexican immigration poses challenges to our policies and to our identity in a way nothing else has in the past.
Certainly there are various trans-Islamic political movements, which try to appeal to Muslims in all societies.
America doesn't border on Muslim countries. European countries do and that seems to be a fundamental difference.
Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.
Since the revolution of the 18th century, America has basically had an ideology of liberal democracy and constitutionalism.
I've been to Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait for brief visits at conferences, and they are very interesting countries.
Nationalism is a central ideology for people who are trying to establish their own states in which they can play a dominant role.
In the coming decades, questions of identity, meaning cultural heritage, language, and religion will play a central role in politics.
U.S. foreign policy is in every area impacted by ethnic groups of one sort or another as well as economic groups and regional groups.
Quite obviously power will continue to play a central role in global politics as it always does. But usually there is something else.
Much of what we now consider to be problems concerning immigration and assimilation really concern Mexican immigration and assimilation.
It will take a long time, and certainly the West will remain the dominant civilization well into the next century, but the decline is occurring.
I think fundamentalism is this radical attitude toward one's own identity and civilization as compared to other people's identities and cultures.
I think we can expect leaders of Muslim societies to cooperate with each other on many issues just as Western societies cooperate with each other.
Immigrants are people who leave one country, one society, and move to another society. But there has to be a recipient society to which the immigrants move.
Total falsehoods can be easily exposed for what they are by citing exceptions to their claims. Hence, they are less likely to be accepted as the total truth.
They weren't immigrating to some existing society; indeed, they often did whatever they could do to destroy whatever existed here in the way of Indian society.
The biggest difference as far as Muslims in Europe and America are concerned is that the number of Muslims in America is small compared to the number in Europe.
I am doubtful that there will be any sort of real coherence of Muslim societies into a single political system run by an elected or non-elected group of leaders.
Also, of course, for most of this time most Americans thought of America as a white country with, at best, only a very segregated and subordinate role for blacks.
We really only came around to accepting and integrating the propositional dimension of identity into a concept of ourselves at the time of the American Revolution.
But then I came to the conclusion that no, while there may be an immigration problem, it isn't really a serious problem. The really serious problem is assimilation.
The relations between countries in the coming decade are most likely to reflect their cultural commitments, their cultural ties and antagonism with other countries.
There are lots of conflicts going on in the Middle East. It is unclear as to which country will emerge, if any, as the dominant or hegemonic power in the Middle East.
Global politics remains extremely complex and countries have different interests, which will also lead them to make what might seem as rather bizarre friends and allies.