Samuel P. Huntington Quotes

Expectations should not always be taken as reality; because you never know when you will be disappointed.

But then I came to the conclusion that no, while there may be an immigration problem, it isn't really a serious problem. The really serious problem is assimilation.

Partial truths or half-truths are often more insidious than total falsehoods.

Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.

Many more people in the world are concerned about sports than human rights.

Some Westerners […] have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise.

It will take a long time, and certainly the West will remain the dominant civilization well into the next century, but the decline is occurring.

The relations between countries in the coming decade are most likely to reflect their cultural commitments, their cultural ties and antagonism with other countries.

Global politics remains extremely complex and countries have different interests, which will also lead them to make what might seem as rather bizarre friends and allies.

Nationalism is a central ideology for people who are trying to establish their own states in which they can play a dominant role.

I think fundamentalism is this radical attitude toward one's own identity and civilization as compared to other people's identities and cultures.

Hispanics speak Spanish or Portuguese, which are languages we Americans are familiar with, so it doesn't seem to pose the same types of problems as Arabic-speaking Muslims do in Europe.

In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.

Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.

Two significant developments in the past several decades have been the collapse of communism as an ideology and the general acceptance, in rhetoric, if not practice, of liberal democracy.

We really only came around to accepting and integrating the propositional dimension of identity into a concept of ourselves at the time of the American Revolution.

There will be associations and partnerships between some Muslim countries and some Christian countries. Those already exist. And they may shift as different regimes come and go and interests change.

Thus, biologically speaking the American people are literally only half an immigrant people.

Cultural America is under siege. And as the Soviet experience illustrates, ideology is a weak glue to hold together people otherwise lacking racial, ethnic, and cultural sources of community.

In the coming decades, questions of identity, meaning cultural heritage, language, and religion will play a central role in politics.

A lot of people tend to think I'm a dogmatic ideologue, which I'm not.

And the big question for the West, of course, and to the Europeans is, what other countries, which were formerly part of the Soviet bloc, should be incorporated into western institutions?

I am doubtful that there will be any sort of real coherence of Muslim societies into a single political system run by an elected or non-elected group of leaders.

Collective will supplants individual whim

I think we've seen at least the beginnings of rather significant social and economic change in the Muslim world, which I think will in due course lead to more political change.

The basis of association and antagonism among countries has changed over time.

In 1920, the West ruled huge amounts of the world.

The biggest difference as far as Muslims in Europe and America are concerned is that the number of Muslims in America is small compared to the number in Europe.

Certainly there are various trans-Islamic political movements, which try to appeal to Muslims in all societies.

When you have increased migration of peoples and ethnic and religious minorities, you develop a set of rules and language the larger society can accept and the minority community can accept.

There has been an Irish lobby that has impacted U.S. foreign policy for a century and a half, and at times made our relations with Great Britain very difficult. Other comparable lobbies exist.

Fascism and communism have not entirely disappeared but have been sidelined certainly, and liberal democracy has come to be accepted, in theory at least, around the world, if not always in practice.

Both sides are divided and Western countries collaborate with Muslim countries and vice versa.

People have multiple identities.

I think it's hard to talk about the Muslim world and Christian world as blocks.

Maybe Iraq will come back and become the dominant power among Arab countries. That seems to me as conceivable.

Also, of course, for most of this time most Americans thought of America as a white country with, at best, only a very segregated and subordinate role for blacks.

I think we can expect leaders of Muslim societies to cooperate with each other on many issues just as Western societies cooperate with each other.

There are lots of conflicts going on in the Middle East. It is unclear as to which country will emerge, if any, as the dominant or hegemonic power in the Middle East.

Quite obviously power will continue to play a central role in global politics as it always does. But usually there is something else.

I've been to Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait for brief visits at conferences, and they are very interesting countries.

As far as ideology or political beliefs are concerned, countries are very different.

I don't know what will happen 100 years from now.

Since the revolution of the 18th century, America has basically had an ideology of liberal democracy and constitutionalism.

U.S. foreign policy is in every area impacted by ethnic groups of one sort or another as well as economic groups and regional groups.

America doesn't border on Muslim countries. European countries do and that seems to be a fundamental difference.

Fundamentalist tendencies and movements existed, so far as I know, in all societies and civilizations.

Except under rare circumstances, I don't write responses to criticism.

The core of the American set of beliefs has remained pretty constant.

I don't say that the West is united, I don't suggest that.