Culture Quotes

It is just man's turning away from instinct--his opposing himself to instinct--that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature andseeks to perpetuate nature; while consciousness can only seek culture or its denial.

There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits theevidences of large property, as if after all it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls: if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes and coach and horses?

I think really, China, Chinese, I think they really have a long history of civilization, rich culture.

No one in my family had ever attended school [...] On the first day of school my teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave each of us an English name. This was the custom among Africans in those days and was undoubtedly due to the British bias of our education. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why this particular name I have no idea.

Once you see the drivers in Indonesia you understand why religion plays such a part in their lives.

[the difference between the old and the new education being] in a word, the old was a kind of propagation-men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.

Report of fashions in proud Italy Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation Limps after in base imitation

We must travel; we must go to foreign parts. We must see how the engine of society works in other countries, and keep free and open communication with what is going on in the minds of other nations, if we really want to be a nation again.

You cannot tear up ancient rootages and safely plant the tree of liberty in soil that is not native to it.

Everything that is popular, it has been said, deserves the attention of philosophers: and this is for the obvious reason, that although it may not be of any worth in itself, yet it characterizes the people.

I understand that and I have had very candid discussions with Saudi leaders in the past. I respect their culture and their heritage and their traditions, but I think that they now, as they move forward, will have to start examining these traditions and these practices to see whether or not change is appropriate.

I too have a certain idea of America. Moreover, I would not feel entitled to say that of any other country, except my own. This is not just sentiment, though I always feel ten years younger – despite the jet-lag – when I set foot on American soil: there is something so positive, generous, and open about the people – and everything actually works. I also feel, though, that I have in a sense a share of America.

I understand that the worst people in England at a time were ran to America, for some reason.Then slavery came and calls of aggression. But we've been there 600 years and there ain't no peace between black and whites because the cultures are different - like the Chinese and Mexicans cannot integrate: the music is different, the eating is different.

A nation, like a tree, does not thrive well till it is engraffed with a foreign stock.

Let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, and all America will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that, after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a fine person to is to drown him to save his board.

That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well — it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere — belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.

For the person that wrote that, were they involved with anything last year that was as culturally significant as the Yeezus tour or that album? ... The bar was terrible, and the wedding planner didn't approve it with me. I was having issues with this wedding planner the entire time on approvals, and I get there and they threw some weird plastic bar there.

[Black people] come into the world exactly like you. It's just that there are circumstances in the culture that are dictated and put on our lives that we have to fight against.

Artists reach areas far beyond the reach of politicians. Art, especially entertainment and music, is understood by everybody, and it lifts the spirits and the morale of those who hear it.

European toilet paper is made from the same material that Americans use for roofing, which is why Europeans tend to remain standing throughout soccer matches.

A less 'brainy-culture' would learn to synchronise its body rhythms rather than its clocks.

America is not civil, whilst Africa is barbarous.

The most Indian thing about the Indian is surely not his moccasins or his calumet, his wampum or his stone hatched, but traits of character and sagacity, skill, or passion.

Tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country.

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

Folk music is the original melody of man; it is the musical mirror of the world.

After studying the Hungarian language for years, I can confidently conclude that had Hungarian been my mother tongue, it would have been more precious. Simply because through this extraordinary, ancient and powerful language it is possible to precisely describe the tiniest differences and the most secretive tremors of emotions.

I make music as good as possible, but I do reference cultural icons, because I want my music to be a time capsule of 2007.

Your people eat dry and tasteless flesh but it is off plates as smooth as ivory and as round as the sun.

Our country, customs, laws, our ambitions, and our notions of fit and fair-all these we never made; we found them ready-made; we but quote from them. What would remain to me if this art of appropriation were derogatory to genius? Every one of my writings has been furnished to me by a thousand different persons, a thousand things; wise and foolish have brought me, without suspecting it, the offering of their thoughts, faculties, and experience. My work is an aggregation of beings taken from the whole of nature. It bears the name of Goethe.

How much disgruntled heaviness, lameness, dampness, how much beer is there in the German intelligence.

Long before being nerdy was cool, there was Leonard Nimoy.

Irving Wallace wrote a bestselling novel, The Man, in the 1960s about a black man becoming president of the United States. We thought that such a possibility was thousands of years in the future. Some people may still have some difficulty with the idea, but that's a major cultural meme shift.

I do not think that I was brought up in a unique society with unique features about giving.

Culture is - it is a reflection of our moment in our time, right? And in present culture is the way we express how we're feeling about the moment.

If it wasn't for race mixing, there'd be no video girls.

These people, as far as I can see, do not congregate in the notorious centers of the movement, like the North Beach in San Francisco or Greenwich Village, or Venice, California.

There is more fine abstract design in Navajo rugs than in all these modern paintings.

The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.

Too much of the animal disfigures the civilized human being, too much culture makes a sick animal.

I do not want my house to be rounded by walls and my windows to be closed to other cultures. I wish to become familiar with the culture of lands as much as possible but I will not permit them to affect me or shake me from my own status.

In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel.

I make pop culture.

India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only.

The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor

The first concern of any dictatorship is, consequently, to subjugate both labor and culture.

When members of a society wish to secure that society's rich heritage they cherish their arts and respect their artists. The esteem with which we regard the multiple cultures offered in our country enhances our possibilities for healthy survival and continued social development.

We really are 15 countries, and it's remarkable that each of us thinks we represent the real America. The Midwesterner in Kansas, the black American in Durham - both are certain they are the real American.

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty...an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.

Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.

Europe has lived on its contradictions, flourished on its differences, and, constantly transcending itself thereby, has created a civilization on which the whole world depends even when rejecting it. This is why I do not believe in a Europe unified under the weight of an ideology or of a technocracy that overlooked these differences.

Morale in an organization does not mean that "people get along together"; the test is performance not conformance.

A race of people is like and individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.

The most general deficiency in our sort of culture and education is gradually dawning on me: no one learns, no one strives towards, no one teaches--enduring loneliness.

Basically the French are all peasants.

A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.

And I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States.

On Halloween, because we don't celebrate it, my dad would drive me somewhere, anywhere different. Like Little Italy in New York to walk around and teach me all about the food and culture.

Americans are incredibly inpatient. Someone once said that the shortest period of time in America is the time between when the light turns green and when you hear the first horn honk.

Hip-hop is not the problem, our reality is the problem.