I telephoned hope yesterday I asked him: can you extract for us odor From onion and haddock? He said : Sure! I said : and can you Ignite with water a fire? He said : sure! I said: is it possible to distill form Colocynth the honey? He said : sure! I said : and is it possible to put earth in Saturn's pocket ? He said : yes… sure! everything is possible I said : then our Arabs [Arab leaders] will feel ashamed someday He said : not in a million years will ever happen what you say. — the Iraqi poet Ahmed Matar
“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