Shereen El Feki Quotes

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

In the late 20th century, it became possible to travel between cultures, between the old world and the new, with great ease. So when you go back, you take the changed person with you who, in turn, changes things that otherwise might have stayed the same.

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

Finally, I have to say that the most surprising aspect has been the speed at which the folks in India adapt to Western practices. They learn fast, really, really fast.

What's interesting about the 21st century is how people deal with cultural history. We don't necessarily feel like there are discrete categories. We consume it as a complete package, whether it's down the street or on the other side of the globe.

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

We've had American TV shows in Britain for years and that hasn't affected our culture at all.

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

Fact is, given a choice to erase or embrace Western popular culture, most Muslims would gleefully embrace it.

I have no doubt that Japan will propagate to China and other countries in the Orient, whose standard of civilization is low, her new civilization, which is a product of harmonizing the Japanese and European civilizations. In a sense Japan may be said to have the mission of harmonizing Eastern and Western civilization and of propagating the new civilization; nay, I do not hesitate to declare that this is her mission

We should be obliged to admit that Europe is Americanizing herself with disconcerting rapidity.

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.

The Empress Dowager enjoins her people that only by adopting what is superior about the foreign countries can we rectify what is wanting in China.

I find that my Israeli background actually helps me to break some boundaries because we don't have such long traditions. We took traditions from Europe, from the Middle East, and we were encouraged to explore and adapt things.

When you bring multiple cultures together, there's a degree of push and pull.

We cannot just ape the west. What may be good in an alien country may be unpalatable in India.

Modernization means Westernization.

For all the social changes in China can be traced to their early beginnings in the days when the new tools or vehicles of commerce and locomotion first brought the Chinese people into unavoidable contact with the strange ways and novel goods of the Western peoples.

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.

Things are so much global and Americanised.

The Japanese keenly learned from Western civilisation in a bid to modernize and preserve the nation.

Everything has been homogenized. Over time, with television and jet travel, everybody has blended together. Some of our wonderful charm has been lost.

I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.

While we can learn from U.S. models, we certainly can't practice them.

When you introduce something new to a country, you want to do it right. Generally, that means you have to do it yourself.