Paul Theroux Quotes

You leave the States, and you see people have bigger problems than you, much worse problems than you.

After a lifetime of world travel I've been fascinated that those in the third world don't have the same perception of reality that we do.

I backpacked around the world and went to places like Mexico City and Pakistan, where I'm like, 'Oh. Things aren't quite as good.'

When you go out of your country and meet people, you get a wider perspective.

I think going to another country and being able to evolve past my thinking and what actually went on in America was a little bit different from what athletes experience here in America.

I think an awful lot of the diplomatic problems that exist in the world come from people assuming that their society is the one with a purchase on truth.

So many Americans, for one reason or another, they watch the news and it doesn't really give them the idea of the world. Or they don't read or travel. They have no idea that America is part of the world and not the world itself.

We're very privileged as Americans - it's easy to forget about the rest of the world and to think that your problems are the most important problems. Even poor people in America live better than poor people most everywhere else.

There are certain neighborhoods in America like that - like in Pittsburgh, where I'm from - where people wouldn't think it's even livable for human beings. Those are the areas that I connect with because I come from places like that, and I just think it's interesting how the rest of the world acts like it doesn't exist. But a lot of the best things come from there.

Seventy-five percent of Americans don't even have passports. We don't even think about traveling beyond our borders.

America should do a reverse Columbus. The world no longer needs to discover America; but America urgently needs to discover the world's view of America.

A sad figure (Bush) ' not too well educated, who doesn't get out of America much. He's leading the country towards Fascism.

I think we should all learn to listen more to America.

Becoming involved in sports and traveling the world and seeing how people of color were treated around the world, and America being such a great nation, probably the greatest nation in the world, I think that the thing that would destroy this nation more than anything is the inequality that we have amongst people of color.

Americans don't speak foreign languages, by and large. Their interest in anything beyond the borders of the country is limited. A European of any cultivation has to speak a couple of languages; he inevitably without being very thoughtful about it gets to understand what other people think about him.

I think that one of the most exciting things about making films is the sort of reaching out to the world. It's as an ambassador. You realize the more you travel that you are a cultural ambassador for your own country. You never become more patriotic than you do living abroad.

Much of human history can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that there is more to the world than was generally believed by our ancestors.

We Americans look funny when we're in France because we don't travel, we are fairly un-cultured whereas Europeans go to Africa all the time because it's right there.

I've travelled around the world, I've lived in Germany, I've lived in the United States, I've visited many countries, I can question why such a good country, such huge potential, why we don't develop in the right way.

Probably over half of America does not have a passport. If young people could spend two weeks of their life in India or pick an African country to go to for 2-3 weeks and really see how life can be. That might be a real good thing because I think they would see things even if the trip was a nightmare. I think they might understand more of the mechanics of the world.

I think it's wrong for North America in particular, the West in general to make a comparison between the economic situation in Cuba and the extraordinarily developed industrial complex of North America.

I'm totally engaging in cultural stereotyping, no question about it. But I think it's OK because I'm doing it for a reason, for a good reason.

You can't be Canadian without being aware of at least one other country, the United States, 'cause it's so important to us. I think we sometimes like to think that, you know, Americans will pay attention to us from time to time, too.

Thanks to Barack Obama, America is for the first time aligning its values with those of 'the majority of the world's population.' If you think the world's population has had better values than America, that is has made societies that are more open, free, and tolerant than American society, and that is has fought for others' liberty more than America has, you should be delighted.

It is rather the nature of America - our freewheeling, outspoken, prosperous, liberty-loving citizens extend equality to women, homosexuals, minorities, and almost anyone who comes to our shores, and thereby create desire and with it shame for that desire. Indeed, it is worse still than that: Precisely because we worry publicly that we are insensitive, our enemies scoff privately that we in fact are too sensitive - what we think is liberality and magnanimity they see as license and decadence. If we don't have confidence in who we are, why should they?