The Arabs in History Quotes

“The social institutions and attitudes inherited from earlier times and maintained with increasing rigidity made it difficult to adapt to changing circumstances or to create new political and economic institutions which would facilitate such an adaption. An attitude towards unbelievers that varied from condescension in good times, to hostility and mistrust in bad times, made it difficult to learn from them, or even to understand them, at a time when it was the West, and not as previously the Islamic world, that had something to teach.”
― Bernard Lewis (Author), The Arabs in History

“With few exceptions the pietists are assigned a minor role in the creation of the Arab Empire.”
― Bernard Lewis, Arabs in History