Harold Rosenberg Quotes

We've built the largest empire in the history of the world. It's been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It's only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort.

The history of Europe over the last several centuries provides clear evidence of the transformative power of commerce.

American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history.

As the 19th century progressed, Europe's innovations, norms and categories came to achieve a truly universal hegemony.

The uniqueness of the United States in human history is the United States is the first global power in human history which emerged far away from Africa or Asia, which is the main land of human history.

We are guilty for sending teams into foreign countries to advise them how to be like us.

Teaching the history of the British Empire links in with that of the world: for better and for worse, the Empire made us what we are, forming our national identity. A country that does not understand its own history is unlikely to respect that of others.

Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word 'modernity' if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.

If you look at the history of technology over a couple hundred years, it's all about time compression and making the globe smaller. It's had positive effects, all the ones that we know. So we're much less likely to have the kind of terrible misunderstandings that led to World War I, for example.

In Malaysia, where Western culture was extremely influential, I'd grown up listening to Elvis and the Beatles and watching American movies. People wanted to be like Americans. In contrast, when I got here, I saw prosperous middle-class American college students wanting to somehow join the Third World.

Over the past thirty years Europe’s influence has transformed Cairo. Now…we are civilized.

It is a myth that most people throughout the world hate America. They hate the American government and the American military …. They love American culture—they have made it the world’s culture.

Much of the history of the 21st century, for good or ill, will be written in Asia.

It isn't pleasant to surrender to the hegemony of a nation which is still wild and primitive, and to concede the absolute superiority of its customs and institutions, science and technology, literature and art. Must one sacrifice so much in the name of the unity of mankind?

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, products and tastes developed in America have increasingly influenced lifestyles in Europe, whereas in previous centuries, it was generally the other way around.

If there is cultural imperialism, it is definitely American.

A lot of my work reflects the incredible influence that America has had on contemporary African culture. Some of it's insidious, some of it's innocuous, some of it's invisible. It's there.

You Americans, you have no idea how much your stuff infiltrates the rest of the world!

The opponents of this process have always tried to vilify westernization as a poor imitation.

The domination of western values, beliefs and way of life has angered many from the east and in developing countries.

Now, I know it's a widespread assumption in the West that as countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not. It is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West.

One thing that is not to be underestimated is American culture's influence on the rest of the world.

The U.S. has intervened more often in more countries farther from its own shores than has any power in modern history.

In Canada you grow up - we're next to the United States. We're watching whatever you're watching. We're following your news. It's obvious that we are inundated with American cultural information and political information. Whereas the opposite is not true.

Sometime in the future - 25, 50, 75 years hence - what will the situation be like then? By that time the Chinese will have the capability of delivery too.