I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them. — Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
“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