Charles Emmerson Quotes

New York presented a paradox. While foreigners thought of New York has the symbol of America, many Americans viewed the city with some suspicion as the country's most foreign.

The Shah "had traveled to Europe and had been fascinated by the march of progress he observed there. But, once back in Terhan, this fascination had not been translated into sustained Persian modernization, but rather dissipated in the Shah's intense but short-lived passion for the latest novelties. "He is continually taking up and pushing some new scheme or invention which, when the caprice has been gratified, is neglected or allowed to expire".

Newspapers provided a common culture of aspiration.

His Majesty has done absolutely nothing but waste his time darling around eating sweets, contributing to the boy's adolescent chubiness, and to the sense of the country's political drift. Rather than being encouraged to govern, the Shah's courtiers preferred to encourage him in his idleness.

Nationalist (forces around the world) could now more readily communicate and share their grievances, viewing themselves as similar groups, engaged in a common struggle for greater autonomy against control exerted from London or Paris.

The city (of Vienna) had an unerring tradition of celebrating some of it's greatest composers after it had around them to die in poverty.

Constantinople had been changing for sometime before the Young Turks got hold of it. It would continue to change long after they had gone.

Apparently, a week Japan was laughable; but a strong Japan was immediately transformed into the prime example of a "Yellow Peril". Might Japan forever be stuck in a kind of no man's land between East and West, not allowed to assimilate into the international order of the Western nations as an equal, forever grouped with the countries of the East among which she felt herself superior, and respected fully by neither group?