Over there is like here, neither better nor worse. But I am from here, just as the date palm standing in the courtyard of our house has grown in our house and not in anyone else's. ... And the fact that they came to our land — does it mean that we should poison our present and our future? Like all invaders throughout history, they had to leave sooner or later. ... We now speak their language without either guilt or gratitude. —Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51