How Civilizations Die Quotes

“Cultures that do not wish to exist cannot be dissuaded from destroying themselves.”
― David P. Goldman, How Civilizations Die

“Adonis contends, lies in the concept of tawhid, or “oneness,” of Allah. Tawhid connotes not just monotheism, but the exclusion of all forms of thought except Islamic doctrine. It refers more to totality than to unity. As the leading European Islamist Tariq Ramadan explains tawhid, for a right-thinking Muslim, it is literally inconceivable to raise doubts about God. A Muslim, Ramadan explains, might forget Allah, but he cannot doubt Allah. A religion that permits no doubt—unlike Christianity, of which Pope Benedict XVI said that “doubt is the handmaiden of faith”—becomes an all-or-nothing proposition. Either Islam regulates the totality of life and thought, so that no questioning may intrude into its magic circle, or it becomes nothing. Even in the most intimate human setting, the nuclear family, the collectivity consumes the individual: Muslim wives exist to placate”
― David Goldman, How Civilizations Die:

“If you truly believe in a supernatural afterlife, to be sure, nothing can really disappoint you. But there is no consolation in being the last Mohican.”
― David Goldman, How Civilizations Die:

“Spengler’s Universal Law #8: Wars are won by destroying the enemy’s will to fight. A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women. The”
― David Goldman, How Civilizations Die:

“It turns out that China, not the United States or Israel, presents the greatest existential threat to the Arab world, and through no fault of its own: rising incomes have gentrified the East Asian diet, and, more importantly, insulated East Asian budgets from food price fluctuations. Economists call this “price elasticity.” Americans, for example, will buy the same amount of milk even if the price doubles, but they will stop buying fast food if hamburger prices double. East Asians now are wealthy enough to buy all the grain they want.”
― David Goldman, How Civilizations Die:

“A 2009 World Bank report on Arab food security warned, “Arab countries are very vulnerable to fluctuations in international commodity markets because they are heavily dependent on imported food. Arab countries are the largest importers of cereal in the world. Most import at least 50 percent of the food calories they consume.”13”
― David Goldman, How Civilizations Die:

“No Arab country produces graduates who can compete with their East Asian counterparts; the only Muslim country whose graduates meet world standards is Turkey. University graduates throughout the Arab world have miserable prospects. “The average unemployment rate for the age group 15-24 years in the Group of Arab Countries reaches to 30%, compared with an average rate of world 14.4%,” according to the Arab Labor Organization. “Problem [sic] of high unemployment rates among the educated graduates from universities and colleges, which reaches to 26.8% in Morocco and 19.3% in Algeria, 17.7 % in Jordan. It was noted that 94% of the unemployed in the Arab Republic of Egypt are in the age group 15-29 years, reflecting a lack of consistency of education plans to the needs of the Labor market.”9”
― David Goldman, How Civilizations Die: