9 Quotes by Bernard Lewis

America is harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.

Western technology made slavery unnecessary; Western ideas made it intolerable.

In 1940, we knew who we were, we knew who the enemy was, we knew the dangers and the issues," he told me when I pressed him for a reading of the struggle against Islamic radicalism. "In our island, we knew we would prevail, that the Americans would be drawn into the fight. It is different today. We don't know who we are, we don't know the issues, and we still do not understand the nature of the enemy.

As Osama bin Laden puts it: "In this final phase of the ongoing struggle, the world of the infidels was divided between two superpowers--the United States and the Soviet Union. Now we have defeated and destroyed the more difficult and the more dangerous of the two. Dealing with the pampered and effeminate Americans will be easy.

Geleceği görebilmek için tarih bilmek çok önemli. Birey için hafıza neyse bir ulus için de tarih odur. Tarihini çarpıtan bir toplum nörotik bir kişi, tarihini bilmeyen bir toplum ise hafızasını kaybetmiş insan gibidir.

Islam and Islamic values now have a level of immunity from comment and criticism in the Western world that Christianity has lost and Judaism has never had.

The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic Law.

The golden age of equal rights in Spain was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam. The myth was invented by Jews in nineteenth-century Europe as a reproach to Christians.

If the conflict is about the size of Israel, then long and difficult negotiations can eventually resolve the problem. But if the conflict is about the existence of Israel, then serious negotiation is impossible.