“Every culture, or subculture, is defined by a set of common values, that is, generally agreed upon preferences. Without a core of common values a culture cannot exist, and we classify society into cultures and subcultures precisely because it is possible to identify groups who have common values.”

—  Kenneth E. Boulding

Source: 1960s, Economics As A Moral Science, 1969, p. 12

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Every culture, or subculture, is defined by a set of common values, that is, generally agreed upon preferences. Without…" by Kenneth E. Boulding?
Kenneth E. Boulding photo
Kenneth E. Boulding163
British-American economist 1910–1993

Related quotes

“Even personal tastes are learned, in the matrix of a culture or a subculture in which we grow up, by very much the same kind of process by which we learn our common values. Purely personal tastes, indeed, can only survive in a culture which tolerates them, that is, which has a common value that private tastes of certain kinds should be allowed.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, Economics As A Moral Science, 1969, p. 12

“No science of any kind can be divorced from ethical considerations… Science is a human learning process which arises in certain subcultures in human society and not in others, and a subculture as we seen is a group of people defined by acceptance of certain common values, that is, an ethic which permits extensive communication between them.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, Economics As A Moral Science, 1969, p. 2 cited in: John B. Davis (2011) Kenneth Boulding as a Moral Scientist http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=econ_workingpapers Working paper

Terry Goodkind photo

“Culture carries no privilege to exist. Cultures do not have value simply because they are. Some cultures, the world is better off without.”

Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist

“The basic bond of any society, culture, subculture, or organization is 'a public image.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 64, cited in: Carl H. Botan, Vincent Hazleton (2006) Public Relations Theory Two. p. 349. Botan & Hazleton explain: "Citizens have particular images (or conceptions) of their own nation in relations to other nations, and those images reflect specific values and emotions. People in one nation make attributions about those living in other nations even when they have not visited a particular country. When individuals discuss their personal images with others, they contribute to the creation of public images. The public images of nation-states emanate from a “universe of discourse” (Boulding, 1956, p. 15)."

Roger Scruton photo

“The ethical life… is maintained in being by a common culture, which also upholds the togetherness of society… Unlike the modern youth culture, a common culture sanctifies the adult state, to which it offers rites of passage.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Idle Hands" (p. 127)
Modern Culture (2000)

Ervin László photo

“Independent of biological need fulfillment and the reproductive needs of the species, cultures] satisfy not bodily needs, but values. Values define cultural man's need for rationality, meaningfulness in emotional experience, richness of imagination, and depth of faith. All cultures respond to such supra-biological values. But in what form they do so depends on the specific kind of values people happen to have.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: The systems view of the world (1996), p. 76.

“Culture plays also an important role in the life of minorities, who are generally discriminated in such societies where there is no political and religious freedom. Under these circumstances, their cultural values and symbols help them to retain their identity.”

Mubarak Ali (1941) Historian, activist, scholar

In Search of History, Chapter: Cultural Intervention and Social Change, p. 13/14
Culture

Roger Scruton photo

“The core of common culture is religion. Tribes survive and flourish because they have gods, who fuse many wills into a single will, and demand and reward the sacrifices on which social life depends.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Culture and Cult" (p. 5)
Modern Culture (2000)

“Cultural pluralism is the only thing we all have in common.”

Tom Heehler American author

The Well-Spoken Thesaurus (2011)

Rollo May photo

“Anxiety occurs because of a threat to the values a person identifies with his existence as a self … most anxiety comes from a threat to social, emotional and moral values the person identifies with himself. And here we find that a main source of anxiety, particularly in the younger generation, is that they do not have viable values available in the culture on the basis of which they can relate to their world. The anxiety which is inescapable in an age in which values are so radically in transition is a central cause of apathy … such prolonged anxiety tends to develop into lack of feeling and the experience of depersonalization.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Psychology and the Human Dilemma (1967), p. 42

Related topics