William Pfaff Quotes

“The accounts that history presents have to be paid. Past has to be reconciled with present in the life of a nation. History is an insistent force: the past is what put us where we are. the past cannot be put behind until it is settled with.”

— William Pfaff

“Our culture is teleological-it presumes purposive development and a conclusion.”

— William Pfaff

The truth is that history constantly presents new problems in the guise of old.

— William Pfaff

It is one of the perceptual defects of Western government and press to assign Western-style motives to what people do in non-Western societies, as if these are universally relevant.

— William Pfaff

Foreign policy deals across time as well as space.

— William Pfaff

“The center holds; passion falls away. That is what happened ideologically in Western Europe over recent years.”

— William Pfaff

“But Americans are different from everyone else in the world - except the Canadians, and Americans are more different from the Canadians than they often think.”

— William Pfaff

The moral spectacle of capitalism still offends, as does American capitalism's implacable insistence that the market determine value even in the political, intellectual, and artistic spheres.

— William Pfaff

“The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.”

— William Pfaff

“We Americans really seem to be the only truly non-socialist economy on earth.”

— William Pfaff

Europeans believe in democracy - or, at least, in republican government - but they have considered the alternatives, and continue to do so, and that scandalizes Americans.

— William Pfaff

For four hundred years European civilization has dominated the world - for better or for worse. It is convenient, and flattering, for Americans to assume that this is all over; but it very rash to do so.

— William Pfaff

America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of it's exhausted ideas.

— William Pfaff

“The achievement of nationhood is a product not only of time and circumstance but usually of war and suffering as well.”

— William Pfaff