Irshad Manji Quotes

The question was heatedly debated of how much Western culture should be brought into China.

Secularism is the experience of the Western culture and thought. Insisting on spreading it to places where the underlying intellectual background, and the political and social reasons for its appearance are lacking, is clearly a mistake, regardless of being desirable or not.

The strength of a culture depends on its capacity to open itself up to other cultures, to integrate itself into them and to integrate them into it.

I've benefited from the best of both societies and both cultures, East and West.

We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a global culture, or of cultural globalization.

There are some in our region, especially among the Arabs, who do not respect their own identity and culture, and who are dazzled by the West in an unlimited and unobjective manner

We are the Romans of the modern world—the great assimilating people.

People and their cultures perish in isolation, but they are born and reborn in contact with other men and women, with man and woman or another culture, another creed, another race.

Immigrants have to adopt our values, not the other way around.

It's a wonderful thing to see a segment of our population that is open and eager to learn more about Chinese culture. It has filtered into the mainstream. You see credit-card ads on TV with white couples and Chinese babies.

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.

The basic principle I have is that what is most Korean is what is the most international. I don't want to come here and act like I'm an American. I want to showcase the dynamic potential Korea has, and I want to prove that as an artist.

I don't think you lose culture because you act different cultures.

So American culture is itself a hybrid and lends itself to use in other people's hybrids.

Our culture is not this thing to be seen from a distance. We need to be embracing the friction of it all - that is where the energy is.

I love contemporary culture. Even the stuff I don't like.

People in the Middle East may consider the U.S. an evil hegemony that has tainted their culture, but when I look at the growth of racial and ethnic tolerance and understanding in my generation in the U.S., and see those sentiments make it around the world, it makes me feel proud.

On my parents' scale of values, the more Western something was, the more cultured it was considered.

Immigrants want to change our values and our way of life.

We are becoming a society where multiculture means no public culture.

Two half-truths do not make a truth, and two half-cultures do not make a culture.

It is often not even wise to try to make an American of the best of aliens.

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

There is less and less of France abroad, and more that is foreign in France.

We need to preserve our cultural peculiarities; however, going to the extreme would lead to cultural isolation