Tariq Ali Quotes

Furthermore, the study of the present surroundings is insufficient: the history of the people, the influence of the regions through which it has passed on its migrations, and the people with whom it came into contact, must be considered.

American films are terribly popular all over the world and American movie stars are terribly important. I don't know why.

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.

I'll tell you what colonial experience is.

America's biggest export is media and I think that's a positive thing.

I may be alone in this, but I do sense the power of film, in that movies have the ability to literally change people's minds. That's pretty powerful stuff when you consider that.

The whole world loves American movies, blue jeans, jazz and rock and roll. It is probably a better way to get to know our country than by what politicians or airline commercials represent.

It was interesting to find how dominating American vision is all over the world. I think there's something to be said about the world's mindset and its economics and all of that, and I think it affects the way we see ourselves and it affects music.

Content that's generated out of America, whether it be film or music, has, in my opinion, much greater impact in sustaining our credibility and our place as a cultural capital. This is our great export.

Nations, like individuals, are largely the product of their environment; and many of their characteristics, their fears and their neuroses, as well as their abilities, are conditioned by the impressions of what we may call their early childhood.

Hollywood ... proved a more reliable, cost-effective means of securing world domination than any nuclear arsenal or diplomatic d’marche.

Geography determines the course of history.

From jazz, the blues, country and rock to Hollywood movies, culture has in many ways been our greatest export (or our most obnoxious one, depending on your point of view).

Even in Haiti, I saw John Wayne movies. American cinema has always been the dominant cinema throughout the world, and people tend to forget that. People aren't just seeing these films in California or Florida. They're seeing them in Haiti, in Congo, in France, in Italy and in Asia. That is the power of Hollywood.

The evolution of technology is, like the evolution of literature, heavily path-dependent. Culture plays a far more important role in the acceptance, adoption, and spread of technology than many of us are willing to acknowledge.

When you look at the history of slavery in the United States, and you see the impact that 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' had, culture sometimes is the only way that we can put people's eyes on an emotional truth and make them feel why something has to change.

Politics is downstream from culture.

National events determine our ideals, as much as our ideals determine national events.

I think that intelligent people to a great extent are captives of their time or place.

There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists...Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.

I think we're in a very distinctively different historical moment. I mean, I think that you had two things that were operating in the 1930s that seem to be, in many ways, to have been weakened or disappeared. And of course the beginning of the 21st century, I mean, you have - at one level you had massive social movements.

Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography?

It would be very interesting to make a survey around the world, from wealthy countries to the most advanced countries to see what influence Americans have had. I

America's definitely a trendsetter, and it's where a lot of information goes out to the rest of the world.

To help people emerge from the poverty, you have to understand, what are the structural causes of it? And the structural causes are partially cultural.