Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission … - Edward Said

Simply to make a temporary security agreement now is both futile and immoral. Besides, no such agreement can last, so long as Israeli settlements are still being constructed while Palestinians remain locked up in their collective prison. The only negotiations worth anything now must be about the terms of an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in 1967. Anything else is a waste of our time as a people.

Culture can be used as a screen between the members of that culture and some of the horrid practices that occur, sometimes in the name of culture. Culture can become a way of disguising the reality, so that one can say "Well we're not just a people who flayed all these buggers and niggers out there, we're a people who produced Titian and we produced Michelangelo." And Arnold, I think, meant it that way. For him culture was a way of stemming the tide of rebellion. It was a way of pacifying, of mystifying.

Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.