“Our culture puts enormous emphasis on "socialization", on the supposedly supreme virtues of establishing close relations with others.”

— Robert Hughes

Things I Didn't Know (2006)

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 "Our culture puts enormous emphasis on "socialization", on the supposedly supreme virtues of establishing close relation…" by Robert Hughes?

Robert Hughes 37

Australian critic, historian, writer 1938–2012

Related quotes

“Sometimes I see myself reflected too closely in other men for comfort, and then I have an enormous wish to believe in the saints, in heroic virtue.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Bk. 1, ch. 1
The End of the Affair (1951)

“Cultural relativism dictates that all cultures are equally moral and valuable—though in practice, Western culture is often presented as inferior to all others, stained as it supposedly is by racism and imperialism.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Source: 2010s, Marked for Death (2012), Ch. 11: "The Facilitators", pp. 177–178

“Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio —- empty boasting of American power, American virtue, American know-how —- has dominated our foreign relations now for some decades. … Here at home —- within the family, so to speak —- our attitude to our culture expresses a superficially different spirit, the spirit of petulance. Never before, perhaps, has a culture been so fragmented into groups, each full of its own virtue, each annoyed and irritated at the others.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Foreword to America and the image of Europe: Reflections on American Thought, Meridian Books, 1960, as cited in: Robert Andrews (1993) The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations https://books.google.com/books?id=4cl5c4T9LWkC&lpg=PA207&dq=Our%20attitude%20toward%20our%20own%20culture%20has%20recently%20been%20characterized%20by%20two%20qualities%2C%20braggadocio%20and%20petulance.&pg=PA207#v=onepage&q&f=false, Columbia University Press, p. 207.

“To put it another way, the social (class) relations of capitalism are now outmoded, just as slave and feudal relations became outmoded in their time.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 18.
Context: However, the peasants and workers of Europe (and eventually the inhabitants of the whole world) paid a huge price so that the capitalists could make their profits from the human labor that always lies behind the machines. That contradicts other facets of development, especially viewed from the standpoint of those who suffered and still suffer to make capitalist achievements possible. This latter group are the majority of mankind. To advance, they must overthrow capitalism; and that is why at the moment capitalism stands in the path of further human social development. To put it another way, the social (class) relations of capitalism are now outmoded, just as slave and feudal relations became outmoded in their time.