8 Quotes & Sayings By Samuel P Huntington

Samuel P. Huntington was born of American parents in New Jersey and grew up in Georgia and Alabama. He studied at Yale and the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. His research interests ranged from the dynamics of political violence to the role of culture in ethnic conflict, and his work on this subject led to his first published book on the subject, Culture and Conflict: The Significance of Cultural Differences Read more

United States Air Force Intelligence had recruited him as a code breaker, and he spent many years as a member of the National Security Council. In the 1970s he became interested in democratization theory and wrote The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (1979), which advanced an interpretation that has come to be called "cultural evolution theory." He died of cancer on August 24, 2000.

1
Arabs and other Muslims generally agreed that Saddam Hussein might be a bloody tyrant, but, paralleling FDR's thinking, "he is our bloody tyrant." In their view, the invasion was a family affair to be settled within the family and those who intervened in the name of some grand theory of international justice were doing so to protect their own selfish interests and to maintain Arab subordination to the west. Samuel P. Huntington
2
In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous. Samuel P. Huntington
3
It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future. Samuel P. Huntington
4
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. Samuel P. Huntington
5
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. Samuel P. Huntington
6
The prevalence of anti-patriotic attitudes among liberal intellectuals led some of them to warn their fellow liberals of the consequences of such attitudes for the future not of America but of American liberalism. Most Americans, as the American public philosopher Richard Rorty has written, take pride in their country, but 'many of the exceptions to this rule are found in colleges and universities, in the academic departments that have become sanctuaries for left-wing political views.' These leftists have done 'a great deal of good for. women, African-Americans, gay men and lesbians. . But there is a problem with this Left: it is unpatriotic. It repudiates the idea of a national identity and the emotion of national pride.' If the Left is to retain influence, it must recognize that a 'sense of shared national identity. . is an absolutely essential component of citizenship.' Without patriotism, the Left will be unable to achieve its goals for America. Liberals, in short, must use patriotism as a means to achieve liberal goals. Samuel P. Huntington
7
The British were white, English, and Protestant, just as we were. They had to have some other basis on which to justify independence, and happily they were able to formulate the inalienable truths set forth in the Declaration. Samuel P. Huntington