Samuel P. Huntington Quotes

People have multiple identities.

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

People everywhere talk about Islam and the West. Presumably that has some relationship to reality, that these are entities that have some meaning and they do. Of course the core ofthat reality is differences in religion.

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

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

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

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.

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

I wouldn't rule out the possibility of Muslim or at least Arab countries developing some form of organization comparable to the European Union. I don't think that's very likely, but it conceivably could happen.

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.

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.

Turkey has its own interests and historically, Turkey conquered most of the Arab world, and the Arabs had to fight wars of liberation to free themselves from the Turks. That's in the past and that doesn't necessarily shape what is going on but it's there and it's there in people's memories.

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

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.

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

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.

The United States has been an immigrant country. The Hispanics who come here are largely from Mexico and South America. They are Catholics, but that is an American religion. One-third of our population is Catholic so that does not have the same impact as Muslims coming into Europe.

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.

Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope.

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.

The major difference for us in America with respect to Hispanic immigration is that it is so large and that it is coming from neighboring countries rather than those countries off the Atlantic or Pacific. That creates different issues and different problems for us as compared to the past. It is still very different, however, from the situation in Europe where we see people with a very different non-European religion coming from neighboring countries.

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.

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.

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.

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

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.

Islam's borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.

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

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

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

Certainly here in the U.S., we've had fundamentalist movements that have taken very critical and hostile attitudes toward immigration and the assimilation of immigrants into our society and culture. So these tendencies are fairly universal. The problem is what if they get out of hand and become the dominant factor in a society, which can only lead to the oppression of minorities or even to war with neighboring societies with differing cultures. That's why it seems to me it's important to try to keep these tendencies toward extremism under control.

Obviously there are divisions within the West and divisions within Islam - there are different sects, different communities, different countries. So neither one is homogenous at all. But they do have things in common.