I do not feel that the West has really become less condescending toward foreign cultures than the Greeks and Romans were: it has only become more tolerant. Mind you, not toward Islam—only toward certain other Eastern cultures, which offer some sort of spiritual attraction to the spirit-hungry West and are, at the same time, too distant from the Western world-view to constitute any real challenge to its values.

...I suddenly felt in myself all the weight of Europe: the weight of deliberate purpose in all our actions. I thought to myself, 'How difficult it is for us to attain to reality... We always try to grab it: but it does not like to be grabbed. Only where it overwhelms man does it surrender itself to him.

...the Muslims of recent times had fallen very short indeed of the ideals of their faith, ...nothing could be more erroneous than to measure the potentialities of Muhammad's message by the yardstick of present-day Muslim life and thought - just as he [Shaykh Mustafa al-Maraghi] said, 'it would be erroneous to see in the Christians' unloving behavior toward one another a refutation of Christ's message of love...'

If water stands motionless in a pool it grows stale and muddy, but when it moves and flows it becomes clear: so, too, man in his wanderings.

All cultural imitation, opposed as it is to creativeness, is bound to make a people small.

Of all religious systems, Islam alone declares that individual perfection is possible in our earthly existence.

If the Muslims keep their heads cool and accept progress as a means and not an end in itself, they may pass on to Western man the lost secret of life's sweetness.