East Vs West Quotes

“I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news was posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone recieved the news with pleasure. Several said, "Thank God that son of a bitch is dead."

Then there was a man, smart as Satan, who, lacking some perception of human dignity and knowing all too well every aspect of human weakness and wickedness, used his special knowledge to warp men, to buy men, to bribe and threaten and seduce until he found himself in a position of great power. He clothed his motives in the names of virtue, and I have wondered whether he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love. A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died the nation rang with praise...

There was a third man, who perhaps made many errors in performance but whose effective life was devoted to making men brave and dignified and good in a time when they were poor and frightened and when ugly forces were loose in the world to utilize their fears. This man was hated by few. When he died the people burst into tears in the streets and their minds wailed, "What can we do now?" How can we go on without him?"

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, mo matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror....we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“In the West we are driven by an extreme form of guilt -- if you are not seen to be working like a dog, you're perceived as being slothful.”
― Tahir Shah, The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca

“It is absurd to assume that the new political societies emerging in the East will be copies of the societies we know in the West.”
― Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

“These ideas fit the experience of these Japanese women who often talked about searching for or trying to develop "self" (jibun). Cultivating or polishing self by doing tea ceremony or being a good mother, for example, had a good connotation for the Japanese because it meant that you were trying to go beyond your narrow self and connect self with the larger world beyond social norms. But developing self in the new way these women used it meant to develop self according to just what you want to do or in a way that enhances your own possibilities in the world. Would others see choosing a life for self as selfish? These women had to maintain some ambiguity because they were wandering into dangerous territory when they wanted to travel just to enjoy themselves, or keep working and not marry. In a society that honored the cultivation of a larger self, would they themselves someday suffer for having chosen the self-centered way?”
― Nancy Ross Rosenberger, Dilemmas of Adulthood: Japanese Women and the Nuances of Long-Term Resistance

“In most of the world, people don’t dichotomize the sacred and the secular as we commonly do in the West, so elsewhere religious considerations are much more at the forefront of people’s minds in assessing political issues.”
― Garry R. Morgan, Understanding World Religions in 15 Minutes a Day

“Saigon time was fourteen hours off, although if one judged time by this clock, it was we who were fourteen hours off. Refugee, exile, immigrant--whatever species of displaced human we were, we did not simply live in two cultures, as celebrants of the great American melting pot imagined. Displaced people also lived in two time zones, the here and the there, the present and the past, being as we were reluctant time travelers. But while science fiction imagined time travelers as moving forward or backward in time, this timepiece demonstrated a different chronology. The open secret of the clock, naked for all to see, was that we were only going in circles.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“As they walked down the corridor, Tara was looking at the paintings hanging on the walls. She turned and said, "Look at that! A perfect blend between the Orient and Occident." She then grabbed Amir by the hand and he gave it a little squeeze. "One side emulates Uncle Sam. The other Uncle Shams," she continued.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“Moradi hated using the word "West." He preferred just saying the US or if he wanted to bundle the entire Western Hemisphere, then he would go by the book and say the Occident. He also didn't label Iran as a "Middle Eastern" country. He would always say things like "with Iran being in West Asia." It was a tactical move. After all Iranians weren't Arabs, and this way he aligned Iran with the "West.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish