A Quote by Sergei Ivanov
When it comes to culture, religion and mentality, most Russians identify with Europe.
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For the Russians, frankly, it's time that we punched the Russians in the nose. They've gotten away with too much in this world and we need to stand up against them, not just there, but also in Eastern Europe where they threaten some of our most precious allies.
I'm familiar with the Palestinian mentality, the culture, religion, and when I had information coming in on a daily basis: secrets about personal lives, politicians, what they are hiding from their society that most people don't see, I started to see the picture in a different way.
We lack a political culture, a culture of compromise. We in Poland, as well as the Hungarians, have never learned this sort of thing. Although there is a strong desire for freedom in the countries of Eastern Europe, there is no democratic tradition, so that the risk of anarchy and chaos continues to exist. Demagoguery and populism are rampant. We are the illegitimate children, the bastards of communism. It shaped our mentality.
As you look back in history, we [the United States] have done wonderful things, the Marshal Plan is the most obvious. After World War II, we spent billions of dollars to rebuild Europe or at least part of Europe after the devastation of World War II. We did it out of charity, but we also did it to keep the Russians from getting deeply into Europe.
In Europe, the Enlightenment of the 18th century was seen as a battle against the desire of the Church to limit intellectual freedom, a battle against the Inquisition, a battle against religious censorship. And the victory of the Enlightenment in Europe was seen as pushing religion away from the center of power. In America, at the same time, the Enlightenment meant coming to a country where people were not going to persecute you by reason of your religion. So it meant a liberation into religion. In Europe, it was liberation out of religion.
The U.S. has always understood itself to be united around political principles and not around culture, whereas the nations of Europe have a much more traditional conception of nationhood that is connected to romanticism, which thinks of religion and culture as ingredients of nationhood.
They who seek religion for culture's sake are aesthetic, not religious, and will never gain that grace which religion adds to culture, because they never can have the religion.
I struggled in London for a very long time. 'Be prepared to struggle a lot' - it's a European mentality. The American mentality is positive and 'You can do it' and 'Everything's possible.' In Europe it's an older, more realistic way of thinking. You feel like you're having to prove that you can do it.
The Left is doing to America what it has done to almost everything it has deeply influenced - the arts, the university, religion, culture, minorities, Europe: ruining it.
France, and the whole of Europe have a great culture and an amazing history. Most important thing though is that people there know how to live! In America they've forgotten all about it. I'm afraid that the American culture is a disaster.
France and the whole of Europe have a great culture and an amazing history. Most important thing, though, is that people there know how to live! In America they've forgotten all about it. I'm afraid that the American culture is a disaster.
Most Russians actually were living much better by the end of the 1990s than by the beginning of the 1990s. Most Russians were no longer confronting food shortages.
A faith in culture is as bad as a faith in religion; both expressions imply a turning away from those very things which culture and religion are about. Culture as a collective name for certain very valuable activities is a permissible word; but culture hypostatized, set up on its own, made into a faith, a cause, a banner, a platform, is unendurable. For none of the activities in question cares a straw for that faith or cause. It is like a return to early Semitic religion where names themselves were regarded as powers.
Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoievsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist.
I believe only in French culture and consider everything in Europe that calls itself 'culture' a misunderstanding, not to speak of German culture.
If Donald Trump shows signs of backing out of Europe, the Russians might be willing to stay out of his confrontation with Iran. If he follows Obama's program in Europe, things might be different.
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