Alfred Russel Wallace Quotes

I love having different cultures around, but when the parent culture kind of dissipates, you're left thinking, 'Well, what's going on?'

This clash of the culture, East and the West, us and them, Muslim and Christian, does not exist.

Massive immigration brings with it cultures that are sometimes in contradiction with our values.

If we want to avoid a clash of cultures - and the jury is still out on whether we can - we'll have to make different cultures and religions compatible with the universal nature of human rights and tolerance. But I can promise you this: Anyone who calls me an infidel at the conference will be in for a fight.

When civilizations collide, it usually isn't the more primitive one that prevails.

I know a lot of Americans in Paris who have married Frenchmen. They keep bringing up their experience, the clash of civilizations, the clash of personalities.

The customs of the [Khmer] barbarians are so different from our own that even if we were to capture all their territory, it would not be certain that we could change them.

Islam and its tradition have until now encountered modernity as a cultural aggression (al-ghazw al-fikri), not as a historical phenomenon.

Migrants bring their culture with them… unsurprisingly, Nigerian immigrants to other societies tend to be untrusting and opportunistic.

If my ancestors had been Muslims in a country conquered by Christian armies, instead of Christians in a country conquered by the forces of Islam, I do not think that they would have allowed to live in their towns and villages, retaining their own religion, for over a thousand years.

I grew up in the States, but I go back to Brazil quite often, and a big part of me is very Brazilian, so there's a constant struggle between the two cultures within me. They're very different approaches to life.

Welcome to the brave new world of American multiculturalism. From a nation of diverse peoples united by a common culture, we have become a people divided by a common malady.

The problem of the Muslim presence is increasingly worrying. There are more and more clashes, more and more demands. And I doubt the compatibility of Italian law with Muslim law, because it's not just a religion but a law.

Culture is not a matter of a change of climate.

Westernized Indians don't like my books and I tend not to like westernized Indians - so we're quits.

We have taken so much from your culture, I wish you had taken something from ours...For there were some beautiful and good things within it. Perhaps now that the time has come, We are fearful that what you take will be lost.... I shall grab the instruments of the white man's success: His education, his skills, and society.

There are now no more horizons. And with the dissolution of horizons we have experienced and are experiencing collisions, terrific collisions, not only of peoples but also of their mythologies. It is as when dividing panels are withdrawn from between chambers of very hot and very cold airs: there is a rush of these forces together.

The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs; diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought; superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins.

If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape.

Many years ago Christian pioneers had to fight savage Indians. Today missionaries of these former cultures are being sent via the public schools to heathenize our children.

In addition to the research, I enjoyed learning French and assimilating the culture of another country.

I feel a little schizophrenic because my life is so totally different from here, obviously. And the French values are so different from American values.

America gave the world the notion of the melting pot - an alchemical cooking device wherein diverse ethnic and religious groups voluntarily mix together, producing a new, American identity. And while critics may argue that the melting pot is a national myth, it has tenaciously informed the America's collective imagination.

What they fear, I think rightly, is that traditional Vietnamese society cannot survive the American economic and cultural impact.

But it is a law of life and development in history where two national civilizations meet they fight for ascendancy.