A Quote by Duane Michals

In the West, people tend to look at life as spectators, but in the East, people are the thing. — © Duane Michals
In the West, people tend to look at life as spectators, but in the East, people are the thing.
Someone might say about a person, "Oh, they are a 'Westerner." But who are Westerners? Greek, Bulgarian, German, English, Scandinavian, Spanish, American, Latin. All different nations, all different people. Different individuals live in the West. There's no such thing as "West" just as there's no such things as "East." What is "East?" Turkey, Iran, China, India, Japan. They are all different. They are all unique.
If you look at the movement of refugees, in Vladimir Lenin's phrase, "the people who voted with their feet," the movement of refugees until comparatively modern times was overwhelmingly from West to East, not from East to West. Refugees of all kinds were constantly fleeing from Christendom to the Islamic lands. Jews of course and Muslims of course, but even some Christians and the movement of refugees went overwhelmingly that way.
Ameen Rihani, one of the earliest Arab Americans, devoted his life to bringing the East and the West together. We are not of the East or the West, he wrote. No boundaries exist in our breast: We are free.
No, I don't think about the myth of the West. It's not the kind of thinking I do. That's more suited to people who live in big towns on the West Coast or East Coast, people who stay under a roof, in a room, all the time.
In the Far East, we look at life in terms of circles. In the West, they look at life more in terms of squares and rectangles.
We are one people despite the ostensible rifts, cracks, and differences between the American and Soviet democracies. We are one people and it is not in our interests that the West should liberate the East, for in doing this and in liberating the enslaved nations, the West would inevitably deprive Jewry of the Eastern half of its world power.
With its declining population, with people moving out of the Far East, with an enormously powerful China in the east, I think the real destiny of Russia is to become closer to the West.
OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!
Far more people die in the developing world than in the West. At religious festivals mainly. That's not a myth - the numbers don't lie. I think it's just because in the West crowds tend to be manufactured by commercial interesting, and they have, or at least should have, a responsibility for keeping people safe.
East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.
Oh East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.
Men look to the East for the dawning things, for the light of a raising sun But they look to the West, to the crimson West, for the things that are done, are done.
Life is funny, and a lot of times, the people that I've met have really gone past anything that I've ever dreamed of, so I'm really grateful. My friendships really go from the West to the East. You'd be amazed at some of the people I call friends.
Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east.
I am not conscious of a single experience throughout my three months' stay in England and Europe that made me feel that after all East is East and West is West. On the contrary, I have been convinced more than ever that human nature is much the same, no matter under what clime it flourishes, and that if you approached people with trust and affection you would have ten-fold trust and thousand-fold affection returned to you.
One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself. If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you're going east, and you will be walking east when you think you're going west.
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