Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Dervla Murphy

Quote by Dervla Murphy

“[On Addis Ababa:] Among the city's handicaps are an immaturity for which no one can be blamed, as it was founded only eighty years ago, and a proliferation of architectural excesses for which many people can and should be blamed.”

Quote by Dervla Murphy

Create image

Author

Dervla Murphy
Dervla Murphy

Dervla Murphy, born on November 28, 1931, is an Irish cyclist and travel writer, renowned for her adventurous bicycle journeys across Africa, Asia, and South America. more

You May Also Like

“With our mad lust for Uniformity and a Higher Standard of Living and Expanding Markets, we go to a country like Afghanistan and cruelly try to jerk her forward two thousand years in two decades, giving no thought to the profound shock this must be to her national psychology.”

GivingTryingYearsTwoCountryPsychologyHigherThousandStandardsMadProfoundDecadesLustShockAfghanistanThousand YearsAsiaImperialismExpandingJerkStandards Of LivingUniformityHigher Standards
Book:Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle
Create image

“The more I see of life in these 'undeveloped countries' and of the methods adopted to 'improve' them, the more depressed I become. It seems criminal that the backwardness of a country like Afghanistan should be used as an excuse for America and Russia to have a tug-of-war for possession.”

ShouldWarCountrySeemsAmericaUsedMethodExcusePossessionCriminalsRussiaAfghanistanAsiaImperialismAdoptedTug Of War
Book:Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle
Create image

“This is a city of absolute enchantment in the literal sense of the word. It loosens all the bonds binding the traveller to his own age and sets him free to live in a past that is vital and crude but never ugly. Herat is as old as history and as moving as a great epic poem - if Afghanistan had nothing else it would have been worth coming to experience this.”

IfsHas BeensAgePastMovingCitiesAbsolutesUglyAfghanistanEpicAsiaLiteralTravellerCrudeBindingEnchantmentEpic Poems
Book:Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle
Create image

“one feels guilty on behalf of Western civilisation. What damage are we doing, blindly and swiftly, to those races who are being taught that because we are materially richer we must be emulated without question? What compels us to infect everyone else with our own sick urgency to change, soften and standardise? How can we have the effrontery to lord it over peoples who retain what we have lost - a sane awareness that what matters most is immeasurable?”

FeelsMatterLostRaceLordAwarenessTaughtSickWesternGuiltyDamageSaneWhat MattersBehalfUrgencyCivilisation
Author:Dervla Murphy
Create image