How the West Won Quotes

“No doubt it was “unenlightened” of the crusaders to have been typical medieval warriors, but it seems even more unenlightened to anachronistically impose the Geneva Conventions on the crusaders while pretending that their Islamic opponents were innocent victims.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“No doubt Western modernity has its limitations and discontents. Still, it is far better than the known alternatives—not only, or even primarily, because of its advanced technology but because of its fundamental commitment to freedom, reason, and human dignity.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“Science arose in the West—and only in the West—precisely because the Judeo-Christian conception of God encouraged and even demanded this pursuit.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the rise of science is not that the early scientists searched for natural laws, confident that they existed, but that they found them. It thus could be said that the proposition that the universe had an Intelligent Designer is the most fundamental of all scientific theories and that it has been successfully put to empirical tests again and again.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“The truth is that science arose only because the doctrine of the rational creator of a rational universe made scientific inquiry plausible. Similarly, the idea of progress was inherent in Jewish conceptions of history and was central to Christian thought from very early days.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“In addition, since they were committed to reasoning about God, the Jews were quick to embrace the Greek concern for valid reasoning. What emerged was an image of God as not only eternal and immutable but also as conscious, concerned, and rational. The early Christians fully accepted this image of God. They also added and emphasized the proposition that our knowledge of God and of his creation is progressive. Faith in both reason and progress were essential to the rise of the West.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“The Byzantine governor assembled an army considerably larger than that of the Normans and rebels. He then sent a herald to the opposing camp offering either the Normans’ safe return to Lombard territory or battle. In response, an enormous Norman knight smashed his mailed fist on the head of the Byzantine herald’s horse; the horse fell dead on the spot. (Yes, this actually happened, historians agree.)23 The battle began the next day.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“Impoverished Spain depended on imports not only for manufactured products but even for sufficient food. Spanish agriculture was hampered by poor soil and by the strange institution known as the Mesta. Spanish sheep grew high-quality fleeces—not as good as those of English sheep but better than could be found elsewhere—and Spain had, in fact, replaced England as the source of wool for the Flemish and Italian cloth industries. The Mesta was an organization of sheep owners who had royal privileges to sustain migratory flocks of millions of sheep. The flocks moved all across Spain—north in the summer, south in the winter—grazing as they went, making it impossible to farm along their routes.42 When conflicts arose with landowners, the crown always sided with the Mesta on grounds that nothing was more important to the economy than the wool exports. The government’s protection of the Mesta discouraged investments in agriculture, so Spain needed to import large shipments of grain and other foodstuffs.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“How many victims were consumed by these ceremonies? In 1487, well before any contact with Europeans, the Aztecs inaugurated their great new Templo Mayor. The day began with four lines of victims, each line stretching for two miles. The historian and anthropologist Inga Clendinnen has estimated the total number sacrificed on that occasion as twenty thousand, although others have placed the number as high as eighty thousand.12 This was, of course, a onetime occasion. During regular festivals, the numbers killed at a particular temple probably ran around two thousand a day,13 and there were hundreds of these sacrificial sites. Hence, piles of skulls numbering into tens of thousands were widespread, just as Díaz reported.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“The European Middle Ages collected innovations from all over the world, especially from China, and built them into a new unity which formed the basis of our modern civilization.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“It is well known that the Chinese had gunpowder by the thirteenth century and even cast a few cannons. But when Western voyagers reached China in the sixteenth century the Chinese lacked both artillery and firearms, whereas the Europeans had an abundance of both.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“The Greeks were the first people in the world to play, and they played on a great scale. All over Greece there were games, all sorts of games; athletic contests of every description … contests in music, where one side outsung the other; in dancing … games so many that one grows weary with the list of them.… Wretched people, toiling people, do not play. Nothing like the Greek games is conceivable in Egypt or Mesopotamia.… Play died when Greece died and many a century passed before it was resurrected.23”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“So much, then, for the “mystery” of how Muslim culture was somehow lost or left behind. The notion that in the medieval era Islamic culture was advanced well beyond Europe is as much an illusion as recent ones about an “Arab Spring.” The Islamic world was backward then, and so it remains.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“But following these Stone Age discoveries, progress was slow. It is estimated that in terms of the standard of living, things were pretty much the same for the next seven thousand years.1 People ate about the same amount, lived about the same lifespan, and buried about the same high percentage of their children. Even in the West, as recently as the seventeenth century life was hard and short. But then an era of immense and stunningly rapid progress began in Britain, with a wave of inventions and innovations transforming nearly every aspect of life. From 1750 to 1850 the standard of living of the average person in Britain doubled. And that was just the start.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“The Industrial Revolution was the culmination of the rise of Western civilization that began in Greece twenty-seven centuries ago. It was the product of human freedom and the pursuit of knowledge, which is precisely why it happened where and when it did.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“Keep in mind that democracy merely gives power to the people; it does not ensure that power will be used wisely or humanely.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“Rather than a great tragedy, the fall of Rome was the single most beneficial event in the rise of Western civilization.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“More recently, faculty at the University of Texas condemned “Western Civilization” courses as inherently right wing, and Yale even returned a $20 million contribution rather than reinstate the course.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“The reason so many innovations and inventions were abandoned or even outlawed in China had to do with Confucian opposition to change on grounds that the past was greatly superior.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“Property is insecure. In this one phrase the whole history of Asia is contained.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“As for the fall of the Spanish Empire, ironically, perhaps no monarchs in history were more conscientious, honest, or hardworking than Charles V and his son Philip II. Between them they carefully built the Spanish Empire and ruled it for more than eighty years. Nearly every day they rose early and worked diligently at administering this sprawling entity. Had they been wastrels or playboys, they might have done much less damage to the economies in their charge.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“In contrast, a number of innovations can plausibly be attributed to the Little Ice Age: glass windowpanes, storm doors, skis, ice skates, sunglasses (first used for preventing snow blindness), distilled liquor, trousers, knitted clothing, buttons, and chimneys.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“It needs to be emphasized that the Church vigorously advocated and defended democracy in northern Italy. Not only did the Church unequivocally assert moral equality, but it also ventured into the political arena, with bishops and cardinals playing a leading role on behalf of expanding the franchise.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“By the late twelfth century Europe was so crowded with windmills that owners began to file lawsuits against one another for blocking their wind.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“When William the Conqueror had the Domesday Book compiled in 1086, this forerunner of the modern census reported at least 6,500 water-powered mills operating in England, or one for about every fifty families.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“An additional indication of economic growth in ancient Greece comes from the major increases in the average size of Greek houses: in the eighth century BC it was 53 square meters; by the sixth century BC it had grown to 122 square meters; and by the fifth century BC it was 325 square meters.54”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“Unfortunately, there is no contemporary history of Rome prior to about 200 BC, when centuries of oral traditions were first committed to writing.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“No wonder that progress was so slow within the ancient empires. Anything of value—land, crops, livestock, buildings, even children—could be arbitrarily seized, and as the Chinese iron magnates learned, it often was. Worse yet, the tyrannical empires invested little of the wealth they extracted to increase production. They consumed it instead—often in various forms of display. The Egyptian pyramids, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the Taj Mahal were all built as beautiful monuments to repressive rule;”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“When the Greeks were free they created a civilization advanced beyond anything else in the world. When Rome imposed its imperial rule all across the West, progress ceased for a millennium. The fall of Rome once again unleashed creativity and, for good and for ill, the fragmented and competing Europeans soon outdistanced the rest of the world, possessed not only of invincible military and naval might but also of superior economies and standards of living. All these factors combined to produce the Industrial Revolution, which subsequently changed life everywhere on earth.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“As for doctrine, Luther asserted the absolute authority of Holy Scripture and that each human must discover the meaning of scripture and establish his or her own, personal relationship with God.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity