List of State Leaders in 1717 - Middle East and North Africa

Famous quotes containing the words middle east, middle, east, north and/or africa:

“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)

“America is the world’s policeman, all right—a big, dumb, mick flatfoot in the middle of the one thing cops dread most, a “domestic disturbance.””
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)

“The current of our thoughts made as sudden bends as the river, which was continually opening new prospects to the east or south, but we are aware that rivers flow most rapidly and shallowest at these points.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

“Civilization does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abundance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the faithful friendships of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass any thing of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)

“In Africa I had indeed found a sufficiently frightful kind of loneliness but the isolation of this American ant heap was even more shattering.”
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)