"To my mind, a civilization is much more than just the contents of a few first-rate art galleries. It is a highly complex human organization." (Introduction, 2)

"By the end of your world tour, the notion that the West might come to dominate the Rest for most of the next half-millennium would have come to seem wildly fanciful. And yet it happened." (Introduction, 4)

"In this book I want to show that what distinguished the West from the Rest ... were six identifiably novel complexes of institutions and associated ideas and behaviors.... Competition, Science, Property Rights, Medicine, The consumer society, The work ethic." (Introduction, 12)

"By 1420, when the Forbidden City was completed, Ming China had an incontrovertible claim to be the most advanced civilization in the world." (Chapter 1, 22)

"'Conception is sin, birth is pain, life is toil, death is inevitable.' What more succinct description could be devised of life in the...