Huntington Quotes

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.

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.

I think of love, and you, and my heart grows full and warm, and my breath stands still.

Expectations should not always be taken as reality; because you never know when you will be disappointed.

Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.

In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.

I knew myself well enough to know I didn’t survive books. They tore me to shreds. I’d never met an inanimate object as talented at breaking hearts as a book.

Adolescent love is the greatest pain of all. It teaches you the power other people have to destroy you.

James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now this Lou Gehrig fellow of mine. How did men come to monopolize disease names too?

Suicide is a war of two fears—fear of death and fear of the thing that pushes you toward it. The stronger side always wins. And if you lose, the penalty is death.

Your absence insanes me so-- I do not feel so peaceful, when you are gone from me.

Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.

I wish I had cancer. Or some other grand battle. Dementia, stroke, organ failure. If I lose those fights, I’m brave. But the thing I’m battling is my mind. And if I lose, they’ll just call me weak.

Sometimes, when I read, I realized I was happiest in a world that wasn’t mine.

Who loves you most, and loves you best, and thinks of you when others rest? 'Tis Emilie.

Islam's borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.

Her breast is fit for pearls, But I was not a "Diver" - Her brow is fit for thrones But I have not a crest, Her heart is fit for home- I- a Sparrow- build there Sweet of twigs and twine My perennial nest.

Underneath this little stone Lies Robert Earl of Huntington; No other archer was so good - And people called him Robin Hood. Such outlaws as he and his men Will England never see again.

If I tell you anything worth learning, it’s this. Love is the most expensive thing you’ll ever own. You pay for it with grief, tears, and a piece of your soul, but in return, you receive happiness, memories, and life.

Oh my darling one, how long you wander from me, how weary I grow of waiting and looking, and calling for you; sometimes I shut my eyes, and shut my heart towards you, and try hard to forget you because you grieve me so, but you'll never go away, oh you never will.

Sweet hour, blessed hour, to carry me to you, and to bring you back to me, long enough to snatch one kiss, and whisper goodbye again.

The existence of a word proves that someone in the history of humanity felt the same way I did and gave it a name. It means we’re not alone. If there’s a word for what we're feeling, we’re never alone.

She was broken. I was destroyed. This had disaster written all over it.

Pain is growth. Fear is risk. You can’t be happy if you’re not growing and taking risks.

Ya’aburnee is Arabic for you bury me. It is the hope that you will die before your one true love because you cannot bear to live without them.

I miss you, mourn for you, and walk the streets alone- often at night, beside, I fall asleep in tears, for your dear face, yet not one word comes back to me. If it is finished, tell me, and I will raise the lid to my box of Phantoms, and lay one more love in; but if it lives and beats still, still lives and beats for me, then say so, and I will strike the strings to one more strain of happiness before I die.

Multiculturalism is in its essence anti-European civilization. It is basically an anti-Western ideology.

Collective will supplants individual whim

Tears are the language of grief. And grief is the language of love.

If you had to change yourself to be accepted, you didn’t need that person in your life in the first place. Because it wasn’t you they wanted to be with. It was their version of you.

Becoming a modern society is about industrialization, urbanization, and rising levels of literacy, education, and wealth. The qualities that make a society Western, in contrast, are special: the classical legacy, Christianity, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, civil society.

Don’t shrink yourself to help others grow.

There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are.

It was a promise I shouldn’t have made. One that defied the hardest lesson I’d ever learned. Love is expensive. Its currency is grief. And sometimes, it costs more than you can afford.

Hope is a cruel bitch.

Everyone will hurt you. The key to happiness is finding someone worth enduring the pain.

Even if it means I’ll never be the man you give yourself to, I’ll always do anything to protect you.

you are breathing, and it is beautiful, and i am so grateful for that

I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day that you stay away. My heart goes wandering around and calls for Susie...My heart is full of you; none other than you are in my thoughts, yet when I seek to say to you something not for the world, words fail me. If you were here, we need not talk at all for our eyes would whisper for us and, your hand fast in mine, we would not ask for language.

You’re going to be a headache, aren’t you?” “A headache?” I cocked my head. “You kidnapped me, you psycho. I’m not gonna be a headache. I’m going to be, at the very least, a deadly brain tumor.

The dangerous clashes of the future are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance, and Sinic assertiveness.

People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against.

Arabs and other Muslims generally agreed that Saddam Hussein might be a bloody tyrant, but, paralleling FDR's thinking, "he is our bloody tyrant." In their view, the invasion was a family affair to be settled within the family and those who intervened in the name of some grand theory of international justice were doing so to protect their own selfish interests and to maintain Arab subordination to the west.

Life really is amazing, and when you're about to lose it, you finally notice that you never really took it in before. And you realize the sheer magnitude of what it involves, from your first kiss to your hundredth slice of pizza. I guess that's why those tears drifted down my cheeks.

if we could just stay this way forever, maybe it wouldn't hurt to breathe

Perfection is unattainable. It’s stained by the suffering required to chase it. Perfect is something you think with your head. Lagom is something you feel with your heart.

Love is just being there for someone. It’s that simple.

You’re my favorite plot twist.

Because that was what we were, essentially. Authors of our own stories.

Opportunity lasts a moment. Regret lasts a lifetime

She tasted like sweet venom. Warm and cottony and dreamlike. Deadly toxic. Gorgeously addictive.

They say love is ten percent falling and ninety percent picking yourself back up. What they never tell you is how quick that ten percent passes and how long that ninety percent lasts.

Oh Susie, I often think that I will try to tell you how very dear you are, and how I'm watching for you, but the words won't come, though the tears will, and I sit down disappointed. Yet, darling, you know it all-- then why do I seek to tell you? I do not know. In thinking of those I love, my reason is all gone from me, and I do fear sometimes that I must make a hospital for the hopelessly insane, and chain myself up there so I won't injure you.

He taught me strength. Most importantly, he delivered the cruelest lesson of all—there’s beauty in every beast. Thorns in every rose. And a love story can blossom—even from the carcass of hate.

God and Caesar, church and state, spiritual authority and temporal authority, have been a prevailing dualism in Western culture. Only in Hindu civilization were religion and politics also so distinctly separated. In Islam, God is Caesar; in China and Japan, Caesar is God; in Orthodoxy, God is Caesar’s junior partner.

Books. Rain. Libraries. Driving alone at night with my favorite playlist in the background. Traveling—mainly for the food. But the historic stuff is decent, too.

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.

Beasts were never born—they were made.

You’re rich. We get it.” She yawned. “The only billionaires I like are fictional.

People assume strength is loud. In reality, strength is silent. It is resilience, the will to never surrender your dignity. And sometimes, the only person who knows strength exists inside you is you.

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.

Hypocrisy, double standards, and "but nots" are the price of universalist pretensions. Democracy is promoted, but not if it brings Islamic fundamentalists to power; nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq, but not for Israel; free trade is the elixir of economic growth, but not for agriculture; human rights are an issue for China, but not with Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively repulsed, but not against non-oil-owning Bosnians. Double standards in practice are the unavoidable price of universal standards of principle.

You must let me go first, Sue, because I live in the Sea always and know the Road. I would have drowned twice to save you sinking, dear, If I could only have covered your Eyes so you wouldn't have seen the Water.

She uncurled my fingers one by one and pressed my palm to my heart. “Hatred comes from here. When you hate someone, a piece of them is lodged in your heart. If you don’t let the hate go, you live with that person inside you forever.

If you tell people the world is complicated, you're not doing your job as a social scientist. They already know it's complicated. Your job is to distill it, simplify it.

Lucy: Why do you want me to stay? Asher: Because I like you. Lucy: Why do you want me to go? Asher: Because I like you.

Falling in love makes you feel immortal. Don’t you want that?

I liked being too much because it meant I was never too little.

Storms will always rage. Don’t run from them. Face them. Some things in life can only be learned in a storm.

I’d never met an inanimate object as talented at breaking hearts as a book.

I wasn’t concerned about your sex life because you were a patient,” he said casually. “I’m concerned about it because I want to fuck your brains out until you lose the ability to walk straight. Unfortunately for me.

Falling in love with you is like diving blindly into a book, not knowing it’s destined to be my favorite. Whatever’s more than love, I feel it for you. I am only ever going to be in love with you.

To lose what we never owned might seem an eccentric Bereavement but Presumption has its Affliction as actually as Claim --

Love is the most expensive thing you’ll ever own. You pay for it with grief, tears, and a piece of your soul, but in return, you receive happiness, memories, and life.

Don’t succumb to the fire. Be the bigger flame.

In a Life that stopped guessing, you and I should not feel at home

Here’s a life lesson I’d never wanted to learn. Our secrets are nothing but a string of memories we wish to forget.

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.

the situation between Ukraine and Russia is ripe for the outbreak of security competition between them. Great powers that share a long and unprotected common border, like that between Russia and Ukraine, often lapse into competition driven by security fears. Russia and Ukraine might overcome this dynamic and learn to live together in harmony, but it would be unusual if they do.”16

How vain it seems to write, when one knows how to feel-- how much more near and dear to sit beside you, talk with you, hear the tones of your voice...Give me strength, Susie, write me of hope and love, and of hearts that endure...

What you're experiencing isn't a dry spell. It's a dust bowl. Tell me, do you find cob webs in there every time you get yourself off?

The problem with books about suicide is they’re written by people who are alive.

You will forgive me, for I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with the Dandelion, make but sorry figure in a Drawing -- room -- Did you ask me out with a bunch of Daisies, I should thank you, and accept --

Grief is a side effect of love. It lasts as long as the love lasts. You get used to the pain until you’re reminded it’s there.

I lean against the door, watching my wife exist. Loudly. Messily. Unapologetically. Just the way a woman loved is meant to bloom.

there was something perpetually tragic about us. even in moments of peace. we were two empty planets, bound by grief and a gravitational pull neither of us could deny. destined to collide and end in a fiery death.

ability of Asian regimes to resist Western human rights pressures was reinforced by several factors. American and European businesses were desperately anxious to expand their trade with and their investment in these rapidly

These transnationalists have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite's global operations

The argument now that the spread of pop culture and consumer goods around the world represents the triumph of Western civilization trivializes Western culture. 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.

When I loved a book, I didn’t read it once. I read it over and over again—until the pages fell off, until I could anticipate the words before I read them, until they sunk into me and melted inside my bones in a way that never happened with books I’d only read once.

One grim Weltanschauung for this new era was well expressed by the Venetian nationalist demagogue in Michael Dibdin’s novel, Dead Lagoon: “There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are. These are the old truths we are painfully rediscovering after a century and more of sentimental cant. Those who deny them deny their family, their heritage, their culture, their birthright, their very selves! They will not lightly be forgiven.

Tacenda originates from the Latin participle taceo for ‘I am silent’. Taceo is also the verb for ‘I am still or at rest’. Taceo reminds us silence isn’t a sign of weakness. It is a sign of rest, of certainty, of contentment. Silence is the best response to people who don’t deserve your words.

What, however, makes culture and ideology attractive? They become attractive when they are seen as rooted in material success and influence. Soft power is power only when it rests on a foundation of hard power. Increases in hard economic and military power produce enhanced self-confidence, arrogance, and belief in the superiority of one’s own culture or soft power compared to those of other peoples and greatly increase its attractiveness to other peoples. Decreases in economic and military power lead to self-doubt, crises of identity, and efforts to find in other cultures the keys to economic, military, and political success.

Bolt is a contronym—a word that is opposite itself. If you bolt something, you hold it together. If you bolt, you separate by fleeing. Bolt is a reminder that words were made by humans, and sometimes, humans make mistakes. Mistakes are powerful, not because they have the power to ruin your life, but because they possess the power to make you stronger.

There are a number of good books that draw upon fox legends -- foremost among them, Kij Johnson's exquisite novel The Fox Woman. I also recommend Neil Gaiman's The Dream Hunters (with the Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano);  Larissa Lai's unusual novel, When Fox Is a Thousand; Helen Oyeyemi's recent novel, Mr. Fox; and Ellen Steiber's gorgeous urban fantasy novel, A Rumor of Gems, as well as her heart-breaking novella "The Fox Wife" (published in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears). For younger readers, try the "Legend of Little Fur" series by Isobelle Carmody.  You can also support a fine mythic writer by subscribing to Sylvia Linsteadt's The Gray Fox Epistles: Wild Tales By Mail.  For the fox in myth, legend, and lore, try: Fox by Martin Wallen; Reynard the Fox, edited by Kenneth Varty; Kitsune: Japan's Fox of Mystery, Romance, and Humour by Kiyoshi Nozaki;Alien Kind: Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative by Raina Huntington; The Discourse on Foxes and Ghosts: Ji Yun and Eighteenth-Century Literati Storytelling by Leo Tak-hung Chan; and The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship, by Karen Smythers.

When you come home, darling, I shant have your letters, but I shall have yourself, which is more-- oh more, and better, than I can even think! I sit here with my little whip, cracking the time away, 'till not an hour is left of it- then you are here! And joy is here-- joy now and forevermore! Tis only a few days, Susie, it will soon go away, yet I say, "go now, this very moment, for I need her- I must have her, oh, give her to me!" Sometimes when I do feel so, I think it may be wrong, and that God will punish me by taking you away; for He is very kind to let me write to you, and to give me your sweet letters, but my heart wants more.

On January 3, 1992, a meeting of Russian and American scholars took place in the auditorium of a government building in Moscow. Two weeks earlier the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and the Russian Federation had become an independent country. As a result, the statue of Lenin which previously graced the stage of the auditorium had disappeared and instead the flag of the Russian Federation was now displayed on the front wall. The only problem, one American observed, was that the flag had been hung upside down.

America's industrial success produced a roll call of financial magnificence: Rockefellers, Morgans, Astors, Mellons, Fricks, Carnegies, Goulds, du Ponts, Belmonts, Harrimans, Huntingtons, Vanderbilts, and many more based in dynastic wealth of essentially inexhaustible proportions. John D. Rockefeller made $1 billion a year, measured in today's money, and paid no income tax. No one did, for income tax did not yet exist in America. Congress tried to introduce an income tax of 2 percent on earnings of $4,000 in 1894, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. Income tax wouldn't become a regular part of American Life until 1914. People would never be this rich again. Spending all this wealth became for many a more or less full-time occupation. A kind of desperate, vulgar edge became attached to almost everything they did. At one New York dinner party, guests found the table heaped with sand and at each place a little gold spade; upon a signal, they were invited to dig in and search for diamonds and other costly glitter buried within. At another party - possibly the most preposterous ever staged - several dozen horses with padded hooves were led into the ballroom of Sherry's, a vast and esteemed eating establishment, and tethered around the tables so that the guests, dressed as cowboys and cowgirls, could enjoy the novel and sublimely pointless pleasure of dining in a New York ballroom on horseback.

The philosophical assumptions, underlying values, social relations, customs, and overall outlooks on life differ significantly among civilizations. The revitalization of religion throughout much of the world is reinforcing these cultural differences. Cultures can change, and the nature of their impact on politics and economics can vary from one period to another. Yet the major differences in political and economic development among civilizations are clearly rooted in their different cultures. East Asian economic success has its source in East Asian culture, as do the difficulties East Asian societies have had in achieving stable democratic political systems. Islamic culture explains in large part the failure of democracy to emerge in much of the Muslim world.

The prevalence of anti-patriotic attitudes among liberal intellectuals led some of them to warn their fellow liberals of the consequences of such attitudes for the future not of America but of American liberalism. Most Americans, as the American public philosopher Richard Rorty has written, take pride in their country, but 'many of the exceptions to this rule are found in colleges and universities, in the academic departments that have become sanctuaries for left-wing political views.' These leftists have done 'a great deal of good for . . . women, African-Americans, gay men and lesbians. . . . But there is a problem with this Left: it is unpatriotic. It repudiates the idea of a national identity and the emotion of national pride.' If the Left is to retain influence, it must recognize that a 'sense of shared national identity . . . is an absolutely essential component of citizenship.' Without patriotism, the Left will be unable to achieve its goals for America. Liberals, in short, must use patriotism as a means to achieve liberal goals