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Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order
Patrick Mendis
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Long before Christopher Columbus, the celebrated Chinese navigator Zheng He travelled through the south and westward maritime routes in the Indian Ocean and established relations with more than thirty countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.”
“In Confucian thought, individuals practice moral virtue both by restraining themselves and pursuing their own interests. This is a dual push-and-pull process. In today’s China, the latter is taken care of by capitalism and commerce. The former, however, needs to be taken care of by the rule of law. Otherwise, the system of governance is corrupted by unrestrained individual desires and selective enforcement of ‘virtue’ or law.”
“The United States is the result of an enlightened philosophy; China is the outcome of traditions and history.”
“The Chinese construction of South Asia’s tallest edifice, the Lotus (a Lotus Sutra in Buddhism) Tower, both points to Beijing’s Peaceful Rise and unsettles some onlookers. For the nervous India and the United States, the cleverly designed and highly sophisticated rising communications tower is more than a Buddhist symbol of Peaceful Rise.”
“Natural law is superior as it allows for the pursuit of virtue genuinely initiated from within and themselves.”
“Within this historic and optimistic future in mind, I have made no value judgment of the destiny bestowed on each nation. For all this, however, leadership matters; so do the institutional structures and the system of political governance.”
“Unlike Confucius, Madison maintained that people have a limited capacity to control their passions themselves and act virtuously when their individual interests conflict with others.”
“Today’s connoisseurs of Sino-American relations seem to view the relationship through a dystopian prism; their gloomy commentaries are largely an assemblage of snapshots on contemporary interactions or day-to-day developments without a historical context.”
“To achieve these Jeffersonian ends, Alexander Hamilton—Jefferson’s philosophical rival—devised an ingenious strategy that entailed a strong manufacturing base, a national banking system, a centralized federal government, and an export-led economic scheme protected by the U.S. Navy.”
“To achieve the ultimate Confucian objective—a virtuous society—America has favored the rule of laws over Confucian-style virtues.”
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