In the West we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live as we choose. Liberty is codified in human rights, a magnificent Western creation but also, I believe, a universal good.

Human rights transcend local or ethnocentric values, conferring equal dignity and value on all humanity regardless of sex, ethnicity, sexual preference, or religion. It is in the West that human rights are most respected.

I wish more people would belabor the obvious, and more often.

Being from a minority culture, I realised the importance of looking at non-Western cultures in a positive way.

Discussions of Western civilization are too often confined to works of high art that reflect a relatively narrow element of public taste and experience.

Because of its exceptional capacity for self-criticism, the West took the initiative in abolishing slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in black Africa, where rival African tribes took black prisoners to be sold as slaves in the West.

Monotheism is in its turn doomed to subtract one more God and become atheism