Balkans Quote by Maria Todorova

“The Balkans I know is the Balkans from below: a space of bogoumils- these medieval heretics who fought against the Crusades and churches- and…

— Andrej Grubačić

“All definitions of civilization along to a conjugation which goes: "I am civilized, you belong to a culture, he is a barbarian.”

— Felipe Fernández-Armesto

Modernization means Westernization.

— Camille Paglia

“Imperial and colonial attitudes still define the terms 'civilized world,' 'international community' and 'civil society.' Balkan people were never too impressed by civilization. As…

— Andrej Grubačić

“But as nothing, Western or local, came to fill the void, the great drive to Westernise amounted mostly to the erasure of the past;…

— Orhan Pamuk

“Minor segments of earlier history may have been rescued or 'retrieved' -- e.g. Greek 'democracy,' Aristotle, the Magna Carta, etc. -- but these remain…

— Wael B. Hallaq

“Macedonia, the inspiration for the French word for "mixed salad" (macedoine), defines the principle illness of the Balkans: conflicting dreams of lost imperial glory.…

— Robert D. Kaplan

The more civilized a nation, the more conformed its population, until that civilization's last age arrives, when multiplicity wages war with conformity. The former…

— Steven Erikson

“This interpretation of the Phoenicians as a people has also informed recent literature on nationalism. One of most influential recent studies of communal identity…

— Josephine Quinn

“However, many of our ancestors were both the colonizers and the colonized. We embody immensely conflicting cultures.”

— Dolores Delgado Bernal

Because I was playing Idi Amin, who dealt with the colonisation issue, I became aware of this internalised conflict of what it means to…

— Forest Whitaker

“When the conquests stopped, the empire moved into a steady state or, more bluntly, it stagnated.”

— Edward A. Hudson