The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam QUOTES

1 " For present-day politicians there are only political points to be made from such statements, and the larger the sin the larger the outrage, the larger the apology and the larger the potential political gain for sorrow expressed. Through such statements political leaders can gain the benefits of magnanimity without the stain of involvement: the person making the apology had done nothing wrong and all the people who could have received the apology are dead. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

2 " They are an American Delegation who are doing a tour of the region to apologize for the crusades', said Arafat. Then he, and his guest, burst out laughing. They both knew that America had little or no involvement in the wars of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. But Arafat, at any rate, was happy to indulge the affliction of anyone who believed they had and use it to his own political advantage. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

3 " Charles Martel’s victory at the Battle of Tours in 732 is recognised for having prevented the spread of Islam throughout Europe. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

4 " A society that says we are defined exclusively by the bar and the nightclub , by self-indulgence and our sense of entitlement, cannot be said to have deep roots or much likelihood of survival. But, a society which holds that our culture consists of the cathedral, the playhouse and the playing field, the shopping mall and Shakespeare, has a chance. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

5 " in June 2016, when the UN accused the Ertrean government of committing crimes against humanity, thousands of Eritrean protested outside the UN building in Geneva. The Swiss people had been told, like everyone else in Europe, that here were poeple who had come to Switzerland because they were fleeing a government they could not live under Yet, thousands of them turned out to support that same government when someone in Europe criticized them. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

6 " When it comes to anti-fascism in most of Western Europe, there would appear for now to be a supply-and-demand problem: the demand for fascists vastly outstrips the actual supply. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

7 " A succession of philosophers and historians spent their time studiously attempting to say nothing as successfully as possible. The less that was successfully said, the greater the relief and acclaim. No attempt to address any idea, history or fact was able to pass without first being put through the pit-stop of the modern academy. No generality could be attempted and no specific could be uttered. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

8 " Even before the First World War there was a strain in European art and music – in Germany more than anywhere – that was turning from ripeness to over-ripeness and then into something else. The last strains of the Austro-German Romantic tradition – exemplified by Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss and Gustav Klimt – seemed almost to have destroyed itself by reaching a pitch of ripeness from which nothing could follow other than complete breakdown. It was not just that their subject matter was so death-obsessed, but that the tradition felt as though it could not be stretched any further or innovated any more without snapping. And so it snapped: in modernism and then post-modernism. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

9 " At the height of the 2015 crisis the single offer the Saudis did make was to build 200 new mosques in Germany for the benefit of the country’s new arrivals. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

10 " [They] may have for instance taken the view of Edmund Burke, who in the 18th century made the central conservative insight; that a culture and a society are not things run for the convenience of the people who happen to be here right now, but is a deep pact between the dead, the living, and those yet to be born. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

11 " Europeans have been deflating the language of anti-fascism ahead of a time when they might need it. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

12 " The upsides of migration have become easy to talk about: to simply nod to them is to express values of openness, tolerance and broad-mindedness. Yet to nod to, let alone express, the downsides of immigration is to invite accusations of closed-mindedness and intolerance, xenophobia and barely disguised racism. All of which leaves the attitude of the majority of the public almost impossible to express. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

13 " The millions and millions of corpses, the wasted lives that communism left behind as testament to its main accomplishment, were enough to give any sane believer pause. There were some true believers left, like the British historian Eric Hobsbawm, but the world generally reacted to them with the incredulity deserved for a person standing on top of a pile of corpses promising that with just a few more deaths he could make the whole thing right. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

14 " To immerse oneself in popular culture for any length of time is to wallow in an almost unbearable shallowness. Was the sum of European endeavour and achievement really meant to culminate in this? "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

15 " In such a view of society, however greatly you might wish to benefit from an endless supply of cheap labour, a wider range of cuisine or the salving of a generation’s conscience, you still would not have a right to wholly transform your society. Because that which you inherited that is good should also be passed on. Even were you to decide that some of the views or lifestyles of your ancestors could be improved upon, it does not follow that you should hand over to the next generation a society that is chaotic, fractured and unrecognisable. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

16 " Those who believe Europe is for the world have never explained why this process should be one way: why Europeans going anywhere else in the world is colonialism whereas the rest of the world coming to Europe is just and fair. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

17 " A country that believes it has never done any wrong is a country that could do wrong at any time. But a country that believes it has only done wrong, or done such a terrible, unalleviated amount of wrong in the past, is likely to become a country that is inclined to doubt its ability to ever do any good in the future. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

18 " For the Church of Sweden, the Church of England, the German Lutheran Church and many other branches of European Christianity, the message of the religion has become a form of left-wing politics, diversity action and social welfare projects. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

19 " Only Europeans and their descendants remember guilt. So only Europeans and their descendants have continuously to atone for it. "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

20 " If the burden of working for little reward in an isolating society stripped of any overriding purpose can be recognised to have an effect on individuals, how could it not also be said to have an effect on society as a whole? Or to put it the other way around, if enough people in a society are suffering from a form of exhaustion, might it not be that the society they are living in has become exhausted? "

― Douglas Murray , The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam