Samuel P. Huntington quotes

Samuel P. Huntington was an influential American political scientist and academic. His work on civil-military relations and theories about the "Clash of Civilizations" shaped debates on global politics and international relations. He sparked both admiration and controversy for his influential perspectives on culture, identity, and conflict. Here are 67 of his quotes:

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)
Thus, biologically speaking the American people are literally only half an immigrant people. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
Religiosity distinguishes America from most other Western societies. Americans are also overwhelmingly Christian, which distinguishes them from many non-Western peoples. Their religiosity leads Americans to see the world in terms of good and evil to a much greater extent than most other peoples. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
Democracy is premised, in some measure, on majority rule, and democracy is difficult in a situation of concentrated inequalities in which a large, impoverished majority confronts a small, wealthy oligarchy. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
Cultural America is under siege. And as the Soviet experience illustrates, ideology is a weak glue to hold together people otherwise lacking racial, ethnic, and cultural sources of community. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
But then I came to the conclusion that no, while there may be an immigration problem, it isn't really a serious problem. The really serious problem is assimilation. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
Undoubtedly many more people in the world are concerned with sports than with human rights. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
One widely articulated paradigm was based on the assumption that the end of the Cold War meant the end of significant conflict in global politics and the emergence of one relatively harmonious world. The most widely discussed formulation of this model was "the "end of history" thesis advanced by Francis Fukuyama. "We may be witnessing, Fukuyama argued, "... the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." ... The future will be devoted not to great exhilarating struggles over ideas but rather to resolving mundane economic and technical problems. And, he concluded rather sadly, it will all be rather boring. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
It was this society and culture that among other things - including economic opportunities here and repression in Europe - attracted subsequent generations of immigrants to this country. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
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)
The great problem there is we have to have the cooperation of those other Asian countries. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
The leaders of the United States have not only permitted that but assiduously promoted the diversity rather than the unity of the people they govern. The leaders of other countries have, as we have seen, at times attempted to disavow their cultural heritage and shift the identity of their country from one civilization to another. In no case to date have they succeeded and they have instead created schizophrenic torn countries. The American multiculturalists similarly reject their country's cultural heritage. Instead of attempting to identify the United States with another civilization, however, they wish to create a country of many civilizations, which is to say a country not belonging to any civilization and lacking a cultural core. History shows that no country so constituted can long endure as a coherent society. A multicivilizational United States will not be the United States; it will be the United Nations. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
Hypocrisy, double standards, and "but nots" are the price of universalist pretensions. Democracy is promoted, but not if it brings Islamic fundamentalists to power; nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq, but not for Israel; free trade is the elixir of economic growth, but not for agriculture; human rights are an issue for China, but not with Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively repulsed, but not against non-oil-owning Bosnians. Double standards in practice are the unavoidable price of universal standards of principle. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
China under the Tang, Sung, and Ming dynasties, the Islamic world from the eighth to the twelfth centuries, and Byzantium from the eighth to the eleventh centuries far surpassed Europe in wealth, territory, military power, and artistic, literary and scientific achievements. Between the eleventh and thirteen centuries, European culture began to develop, facilitated by the "eager and systematic appropriation of suitable elements from the higher civilization of Islam and Bizantium, together with adaptation of this inheritance to the special conditions and interests of the West." View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
Avoidance of a global war of civilizations depends on world leaders accepting and cooperating to maintain the multicivilizational character of global politics. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
The survival of the West depends on Americans reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western societies. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
When an American thinks about the problem of government-building, he directs himself not to be creation of authority and the accumulation of power but rather to the limitation of authority and the division of power. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
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. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
Expectations should not always be taken as reality; because you never know when you will be disappointed. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
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)
Partial truths or half-truths are often more insidious than total falsehoods. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
Also, of course, for most of this time most Americans thought of America as a white country with, at best, only a very segregated and subordinate role for blacks. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
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. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington
I think clearly the United States, as well as other western nations, should stand by their commitments to human rights and democracy and should try to influence other countries to move in that direction. View quote
Samuel P. Huntington