Quotes about culture
page 10

“What renders a problem definite, and what leaves it indefinite, may best be understood from mathematics. The very important idea of solving a problem within limits of error is an element of rational culture, coming from the same source. The art of totalizing fluctuations by curves is capable of being carried, in conception, far beyond the mathematical domain, 65 where it is first learned. The distinction between laws and coefficients applies in every department of causation. The theory of Probable Evidence is the mathematical contribution to Logic, and is of paramount importance.”

Alexander Bain (1818–1903) Scottish philosopher and educationalist

Source: Education as a Science, 1898, pp. 151-152.

Law, Art, Error, Mathematics

“International human rights is an issue basic to the quality of future life and deserving of extensive exploration. The effectiveness of this exploration may be increased by the use of an integrated, multifaceted format which is not only cross-cultural and/or cross-national but also interdisciplinary. Such an approach can reduce the tendency to treat human rights issues in an oversimplified manner.”

Vera Mae Green (1928–1982) American anthropologist and academic

Nelson; Green, Jack; Vera Mae (1980). International Human Rights: Contemporary Issues. Stanforville, NY: Human Rights Publishing Group. ISBN 0-930576-37-3.

Life, Future

“These differences in moral vision and map-making bred, In turn, conflicting institutional needs and social policies, within the constraints of an under-developed economy and society in terms of Western standards. Though both were ‘backward-looking’, the hierarchical and theocratic Byzantine ideal with its cultural affinity to Orthodox Tsarism, lent itself to a rural and patriarchal society whose political institutions would be subordinated to the religious controls of the clergy and their supporters among the notables; their suspicions of the West would be compensated by the eastward drive inherent in the Megali Idea and its dream of a restored Byzantine empire in Anatolia and the Aegean. Whereas the Hellenic vision”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Source: The Ethnic Origins of Nations (1987), p. 203.

Dreams, Idea, Support

“The shrinking of church religion, however, is only one – and the sociologically less interesting – dimension of the problem of secularization. For the analysis of contemporary society another question is more important. What are the dominant values overarching contemporary culture? What is the socio-structural basis of these values and what is their function in the live of contemporary man?”

Thomas Luckmann (1927–2016) American-Austrian sociologist

Source: The invisible religion, 1967, p. 40

Religion, Question, Problem

“The strength of a culture depends on its capacity to open itself up to other cultures, to integrate itself into them and to integrate them into it. It doesn't matter how many differences there may be, Habermas pointed out, everyone shares some principles. No culture tolerates the exploitation of human beings. No religion permits the murder of innocent people. No civilisation accepts violence or terror.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

[...] "Peace is not a natural state of man, as the great pacifist Gandhi told us. But man can create it. If we have broken down walls that seemed unbreakable, we will not passively agree that more profound differences should their place." 5th Dec. 2005 Sources: Transcripción completa del discurso en la web de la ONU http://www.spainun.org/pages/viewfull.cfm?ElementID=2229&print=1. Many extracts taken from the press, e.g. Cadena Ser http://www.cadenaser.com/espana/articulo/alegato-terrorismo-primera-reunion-alianza/csrcsrpor/20051127csrcsrnac_1/Tes. As President, 2005

People, Religion, Dependency

“When Pushkin - who was in the position of having to think what form a national culture might take - called for a dispassionate criticism, he wasn't calling for help in writing poems, which he could do all by himself. He was merely stated his wish to write them in a civilized atmosphere, whose absence was reducing him to isolation, and thereby damaging his individuality.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'A Death in Life'
Essays and reviews, Snakecharmers in Texas (1988)

Thinking, Help

“If you ask most teachers of science what their main goal is, they will probably say: for my students to understand the basic concepts of physics, chemistry, biology, or whatever other field is being studied. The critical words here are ‘understand’ and ‘concept’, and both of these terms assume a fundamentally psychological approach to learning… If we see the goals of science education in terms of what students will be able to do, and how they will be able to make sense of the world, rather than in terms of our speculations about what may be going on in their brains, then we need to see scientific learning as the acquisition of cultural tools and practices, as learning to participate in very specific and often specialized forms of human activity”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Jay L. Lemke, " Teaching all the languages of science: Words, symbols, images, and actions http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/papers/barcelon.htm." Conference on Science Education in Barcelona. 1998.

World, Education, Understanding, Sense

“Manuscript culture is conversational if only because the writer and his audience are physically related by the form of publication as performance.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 96

“I was—and am—deeply concerned about the deterioration in ethical standards in our country; the blurring of right and wrong; the dilution of the biblically-based values that made our nation great. It was apparent to me that significant moral erosion was taking place rapidly in every corner of our modern culture—education, politics, sports, entertainment, churches and families.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ Live Learn Lead to Make a Difference https://books.google.com/books?id=s0q7mZf9oDkC&lpg=pg=PP1&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2006 p. 19. On Having a Personal Mission and Vision

Education, Family, Sport, Country

“Childhood is analogous to language learning. It has a biological basis but cannot be realized unless a social environment triggers and nurtures it, that is, has need of it. If a culture is dominated by a medium that requires the segregation of the young in order that they learn unnatural, specialized, and complex skills and attitudes, then childhood, in one form or another, will emerge, articulate and indispensable.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Source: The Disappearance of Childhood (1982), Ch. 9 : Six Questions

Learning, Childhood

“This too is a truth well known to everyone who has taken even a slight hold of culture, that freedom is an honorable thing, and slavery a disgraceful thing, and that honorable things are associated with good men and disgraceful things with bad men. Hence, it clearly follows that no person of true worth is a slave, though threatened by a host of claimants who produce contracts to prove their ownership.”

Philo (-15–45 BC) Roman philosopher

136.
Every Good Man is Free

Men, Truth, Freedom, Personality

“Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

"Xingu" http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/wharton/books/xingu.htm (1911), from Xingu and Other Stories (1916)

“Throughout this volume, we have felt considerable inconvenience, from the dogmatical classification of plants, and have all along been floundering between species and variety, which certainly under culture soften into each other.”

Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) British scientist

On naval timber and arboriculture (1831), Appendix F, part II

“Many schools are now introducing computers into the educational curriculum. Within 10 years it is predicted that computers will play a significant role in every classroom in North America. The question is, how will they be used? Many educators have been focusing on the use of computers for drill and programmed instruction—to provide individualized practice and instruction in the usual curriculum areas. There is another use for computers in education which some educators, myself included, find more exciting. These involve using the computer:
• to provide an environment in which learning can be intrinsically motivating and fun.
• to allow children to discover, explore and create knowledge.
• to help develop skills of thinking and problem solving.
• to make some of the most powerful ideas of the burgeoning computer culture accessible and tangible to children at an early age.
If you have ever watched a child playing good video games or if you play them yourself, then you know the powerful motivation that graphics displays can create. As I’ve watched children play these games, every bit of their attention focused on the screen, I’ve often thought how wonderful it would be to harness this motivation and channel it toward intellectual growth and learning…”

Michael Friendly (1945) American psychologist

Michael Friendly. Advanced Logo: A Language for Learning. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 1988. Preface

Children, Age, Education, School

“Globalization is not in itself a folly: It has enriched the world scientifically and culturally and benefited many people economically as well.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

Amartya Sen, "Ten theses on globalization." New Perspectives Quarterly 18.4 (2001): 9-9.
2000s

People, World

“In fact, the Lokayata operated and developed as a tradition of universal criticism or negativism, without caring to evolve a durable or regular life-order, a socio-cultural order, of its own, with the result that it failed to commend itself to society at large. No wonder that a branch of the Lokayata, the Nilapata school, so called because its members dressed in blue, were responsible for inception of what may be called an inculture, a tradition of wanton living, about which it is said:…That is: ‘How can the Nilapata feel happy till rivers begins to overflow with wine, the mountains are made of meat, and the world is full of women?”

Charvaka An unorthodox school of Hindu philosophy

Harsh Narain, Myths of Composite Culture and Equality of Religions (1990) (quoting Puratanaprabandhasangraha)

Life, Women, Happiness, World

“The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying ‘we’ when referring to the United States and, even the ‘shock and awe’ of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and just a little uncomfortable. And I remember feeling, when I was anchoring the ‘Today’ show, this inevitable march towards war and kind of feeling like, ‘Will anybody put the brakes on this?’ And is this really being properly challenged by the right people? And I think, at the time, anyone who questioned the administration was considered unpatriotic and it was a very difficult position to be in.”

Katie Couric (1957) American journalist

National Press club speech, September 25, 2007. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1902464/posts

War, People, Feeling, Question

“I would also ask you to fulfil in an abundant measure your obligation for the revival of the glory of Hindu culture and civilisation, not from a narrow or bigoted point of view but for strengthening the very root of nationalism in this country. In this great land of ours where twenty-eight crores of Hindus live, the word Hindu sometimes stinks in the nostrils of many a son of India.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Speech delivered at Benaras Hindu University Convocation on 1st December 1940.

Country

“To London's Europhiles, Britain is obviously "part of" Europe. But, in the age of jet travel, cellphones, wire transfers and the internet, we are less bound by physical proximity than ever. Yet Britain for the first time in history has chosen to be imprisoned by geography and to disconnect itself from its own culture.”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

The slyer virus: The West's anti-westernism (2002)

Age, Travel, History, Time

“As I understand it, the benefits of multiculturalism are that the sterile white-bread cultures of Britain, Canada and Australia get some great ethnic restaurants and a Commonwealth Games opening ceremony that lasts until two in the morning. But in the case of those Muslim ghettoes — in Sydney, in Oslo, in Paris, Copenhagen and Manchester — multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture — the subjugation of women — combine with the worst attributes of Western culture — licence and self-gratification. Tattoed, pierced Pakistani skinhead gangs swaggering down the streets of Northern England are as much a product of multiculturalism as the turban-wearing Sikh Mountie in the vice-regal escort at Rideau Hall. Yet even in the face of the crudest assaults on its most cherished causes — women's rights and gay rights — the political elite turns squeamishly away.”

Mark Steyn (1959) Canadian writer

Battered Westerner Syndrome inflicted by myopic Muslim defenders (2002)

Women, Game, Understanding

“Camilo (Cienfuegos) was the subject of a thousand anecdotes; he created them naturally wherever he went. To his ease of manner, always appreciated by the people, he added a personality that naturally and almost unconsciously put the stamp of Camilo on everything connected with him. Few men have succeeded in leaving on every action such a distinctive personal mark. As Fidel has said, he did not have culture from books; he had the natural intelligence of the people, who had chosen him out of thousands for a privileged position on account of the audacity of his blows, his tenacity, his intelligence, and unequalled devotion. Camilo practiced loyalty like a religion.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Dedication, to Camilo Cienfuegos
Guerrilla Warfare (1961)

Men, People, Books, Religion

“The public's continuing ambivalence about cultural matters is all the more striking given that the political conversation on these issues has for 30 years been dominated by an aggressive, radical right-wing insurgency that has achieved an influence far out of proportion to its numbers. Its potent secret weapon has been the guilt and anxiety about desire that inform the character of Americans regardless of ideology; appealing to those largely unconscious emotions, the right has disarmed, intimidated, paralyzed its opposition.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Escape from Freedom" http://journalism.nyu.edu/faculty/files/willis-tomfrank.pdf, Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination, Vol 1, No 2 (2006)

Secret

“But having invited them here, having accepted their great and varied contributions to the building of the Nation, it is for us to maintain in all good faith those liberal institutions and traditions which have been so productive of good. The bringing together of all these different national, racial, religious, and cultural elements has made our country a kind of composite of the rest of the world, and we can render no greater service than by demonstrating the possibility of harmonious cooperation among so many various groups. Every one of them has something characteristic and significant of great value to cast into the common fund of our material, intellectual, and spiritual resources.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

World, Faith, Country

“Each of the major civilizations has developed the institutions appropriate for its circumstances and survival. But these institutions, though heavily imbued with cultural traditions, rest of a bedrock of genetically shaped human behavior.”

Nicholas Wade (1942) British writer

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History (2014)

Behavior

“Antiques exist as evidence of the cultural tracks we made in the past.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2009

Past

“The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.”

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American screenwriter

Books

People

“It is of the essence of imaginative culture that is transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Anagogic Phase: Symbol as Monad

Imagination, Nature

“It is neither possible nor desirable to make all men think alike. Variety is the very basis of harmony; and, in the sphere of ecclesiastical experience, oneness of feeling is vastly preferable to unanimity of belief. The voice of God, however, as uttered in the events and experiences of the past hundred years, enjoins upon the private membership of the church the culture of that "unity of the Spirit " which is begotten of the Holy Ghost, and which derives from its Divine Author the life in which it resides, the elements of which it is composed, and the impulses under which it acts.”

John McClellan Holmes (1834–1911) US Christian minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 188.

Life, Men, God, Feeling

“The success of mathematical physics led the social scientist to be jealous of its power without quite understanding the intellectual attitudes that had contributed to this power. The use of mathematical formulae had accompanied the development of the natural sciences and become the mode in the social sciences. Just as primitive peoples adopt the Western modes of denationalized clothing and of parliamentatism out of a vague feeling that these magic rites and vestments will at once put them abreast of modern culture and technique, so the economists have developed the habit of dressing up their rather imprecise ideas in the language of the infinitesimal calculus.”

Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) American mathematician

Source: Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth (1964), p. 89; partly cited in: Herman E. Daly. Steady-State Economics: Second Edition With New Essays. 1977/1991 p. 4

People, Feeling, Mathematics, Idea

“It is imperative that Christians be like Jesus, by living freely within the culture as missionaries who are as faithful to the Father and His gospel as Jesus was in His own time and place.”

Mark Driscoll (1970) American pastor

The Radical Reformission http://www.zondervan.com/Books/Detail.asp?ISBN=0310256593 (Zondervan, 2004, p. 40)

Faith, Time

“People ache to believe that we human beings are vastly different from all other species — and they are right! We are different. We are the only species that has an extra medium of design preservation and design communication: culture. … We have language, the primary medium of culture… In a few short millennia — a mere instant in biological time — we have already used our new exploration vehicles to transform not only our planet but the very process of design development that created us.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

People, Communication, Time

“In the political, the social, the economic, even the cultural sphere, the revolutions of our time have been revolutions "against" rather than revolutions "for"… On the whole throughout this period the man--or party--that stood for doing the positive has usually cut a pathetic figure; well meaning but ineffectual, civilized but unrealistic, he was suspect alike to [by both] the ultras of destruction and the ultras of preservation and restoration.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 111

Time

“While I respect culture, this bull-killing ritual causes extreme suffering to an innocent creature and has no place in the modern world. Tradition is not an excuse for cruelty, and many societies have ended or are working to end ‘traditional’ practices—such as slavery, cannibalism, infanticide, female circumcision, foot-binding, bullfighting, and fox hunting—that cause animals or humans to suffer.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

Letter on behalf of PETA Asia to Jacob Zuma, as quoted in "‘Tradition Is Not an Excuse for Cruelty’" https://www.peta.org/blog/tradition-excuse-cruelty/, PETA (6 November 2009) 2001-2010

World, Suffering, Animals

“We had a very hostile period [towards drag] after 9/11, especially in America, that was very fear based. And right now, we are enjoying an open window, politically and culturally. But don’t be fooled – all of this is cyclical. I’ve seen the window open in my lifetime and I’ve seen it close.”

RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros

Quoted by Owen Myers in The subversive genius of RuPaul http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/24914/1/the-subversive-genius-of-rupaul (2015)

Hostility, Fear, Fools

“Technological systems, like all cultural systems, must have some built-in stability.”

Joel Mokyr (1946) Israeli American economic historian

Source: The lever of riches: Technological creativity and economic progress, 1992, p. 327

“I don’t believe in God and all that. But I am Jewish, and very proud to be so, very proud of the culture.”

Alan Sugar (1947) British business magnate, media personality, and political advisor

From an interview with Sam Wollaston in The Guardian, 25th March 2009.

God

“The Culture-Philistine … everywhere meets with educated people of his own sort, and since schools, universities and academies are adapted to his requirements and fashioned on the model corresponding to his cultivation. Since he finds almost everywhere the same tacit conventions with respect to religion, morality and literature, with respect to marriage, the family, the community and the state, he considers it demonstrated that this imposing homogeneity is culture. It never enters his head that this systematic and well-organised philistinism, which is set up in all high places and installed at every editorial desk, is not by any means made culture just because its organs are in concert. It is not even bad culture, says Nietzsche; it is barbarism fortified to the best of its ability, but entirely lacking the freshness and savage force of original barbarism; and he has many graphic expressions to describe Culture-Philistinism as the morass in which all weariness is stuck fast, and in the poisonous mists of which all endeavour languishes.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 8

Marriage, People, Education, School

“Culture is like a smog. To live within it, you must breathe some of it in and, inevitably, be contaminated.”

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Source: Altered Carbon (2002), Chapter 16 (p. 215)

“The social Commons is where we generate the good will that allows a society to cohere as a cultural entity. Markets and governments are an extension of a people’s social identity. Without the continuous replenishment of social capital, there would be insufficient trust to enable markets and governments to function, yet we pejoratively categorize the social Commons as “the third sector” as if it were less important than markets or governments.”

Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

People

“Old-fashioned values may count when conservatives appear on the stump, but once conservatives are in office the only old-fashioned situation they care to revive is an economic regimen of low wages and lax regulations. Over the last three decades they have smashed the welfare state, reduced the tax burden on corporations and the wealthy, and generally facilitated the country’s return to a nineteenth-century pattern of wealth distribution. Thus the primary contradiction of the backlash: it is a working-class movement that has done incalculable, historic harm to working class people.The leaders of the backlash may talk Christ, but they walk corporate. Values may "matter most" to voters, but they always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won. This is a basic earmark of the phenomenon, absolutely consistent across its decades-long history. Abortion is never halted. Affirmative action is never abolished. The culture industry is never forced to clean up its act.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid. (p. 6).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

Money, History, Fashion, Appearance

“Europe could be Islamic by the end of the twenty-first century. … Will tourists in Paris in the year 2015 take a moment to visit the "mosque of Notre Dame" and the "Eiffel Minaret?" Through massive immigration and official dhimmitude from European leaders, Muslims are accomplishing today what they have failed to do at the time of the Crusaders: conquer Europe. If demographic trends continue, France, Holland, and other Western European nations could have Muslim majorities by middle of this century. … What Europe has long sown it is now reaping. In her book Eurabia, Bat Ye'or, the pioneering historian of dhimmitude, chronicles how this has come to pass. Europe, she explains, began thirty years ago to travel down a path of appeasement, accommodation, and cultural abdication in pursuit of shortsighted political and economic benefits. She observes that today, "Europe has evolved from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment/secular elements, to a 'civilization of dhimmitude,' i. e., Eurabia: a secular-Muslim transitional society with its traditional Judeo-Christian mores rapidly disappearing." … France and Germany have pursued a different strategy, attempting to establish the European Union as a global counterweight of the United States—a strategy that involves close cooperation with the Arab League.”

Robert Spencer (1962) American author and blogger

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, 2005, ISBN 0-89526-013-1, pp. 221-224 http://books.google.com/books?id=_7RD2jwMU2wC&pg=PA221

Books, Travel, Time

“A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 22, August 17, 1941.

Flowers

“In times like these, given the cultural and social context in which we are living, there may be a greater risk of reducing Christian hope to an ideology, to a group slogan or to outward appearances. Nothing is more contrary to Jesus' message! He does not want his disciples to "recite" a part, even that of hope. He wants them "to be" hope and they can only be hope if they remain united to him! He wishes each one of you, dear young friends, to be a small source of hope for your neighbour and, all together, to become an oasis of hope for the society in which you are integrated.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

In Homily for Holy mass on the fourth anniversary of the death of John Paul II http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20090402_anniv-morte-gpii_en.html (2 April 2009) 2009

Hope, Appearance, Time, Parting

“Islamization of Europe is an unavoidable consequence, indeed, an inevitability, once Europe ceased to reproduce itself. The descendants of the men who went out from Europe to conquer and Christianize the world have decided to leave the world. The culture of death triumphs, as the poor but fecund Muslims, expelled centuries ago, return to inherit the estate.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, State of Emergency (2006)

Death, Men, World

“We have one called Commodity Aesthetics, which is our section on popular culture.”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

"Beat Establishment: City Lights Bookstore May Be Named San Francisco Landmark", http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0006/25/sun.03.html CNN, 2000-06-25. : On book categories in City Lights bookshop. 2000s

“Computer games are embedded in the cultural framework of technological developments. In the study of technological development and creativity, focusing attention on the failure, the error, the breakdown, the malfunction means opening the black box of technology. Studies have convincingly demonstrated that the widespread inability to understand technological artifacts as fabricated entities, as social and cultural phenomena, derives from the fact that in retrospect only those technologies that prove functional for a culture and can be integrated into everyday life are "left over." However, the perception of what is functional, successful and useful is itself the product of social and cultural--and last but not least--political and economic processes. Selection processes and abandoned products and product forms are usually not discussed. According to Langdon Winner, there is a sense in which all technical activity contains an inherent tendency toward forgetfulness.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

Interview on Furtherfield http://www.furtherfield.org/interviews/interview-johannes-grenzfurthner-monochrom-part-1

Life, Error, Game, Failure

“In a perfect literature all books should be only a single book, and in such an eternally developing book, the gospel of humanity and culture will be revealed.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Auf eine ähnliche Weise sollen in der vollkommnen Litteratur alle Bücher nur Ein Buch seyn, und in einem solchen ewig werdenden Buche wird das Evangelium der Menschheit und der Bildung offenbart werden.
“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 95

Books, Literature, Perfection

“Caricatures speak through visual language and are therefore understandable by all people. They trigger a laugh which is also an international language and reaction. Caricatures can decrease violence and converge cultures. They aim to promote peace, and teach us to be moderate and laugh at our problems.”

Javad Alizadeh (1953) cartoonist, journalist and humorist

Quoted in "Cartoonist Alizadeh, translating world into humor" in Press TV (23 April 2009) http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/92323.html

People, Peace, Understanding, Problem

“A culture is only as great as its dreams, and its dreams are dreamed by artists.”

L. Ron Hubbard book Science of Survival

Science of Survival (1951)

Dreams

“Flaming torches arching from hand to hand, the silken rolling of flesh on flesh, tautened wire vibrating to the human word, ideogrammatic gestures of fear, love, and rage, the mathematical grace of bodies moving through space—all seemed revealed as shadows on the void, the pauvre panoply of man’s attempt to transcend the universe of space and time through the transmaterial purity of abstract form.
Yet beyond this noble dance of human art, the highest expression of our spirit’s striving to transcend the realm of time and form, lay that which could not be encompassed by the artifice of man. From nothing are we born, to nothing do we go; the universe we know is but the void looped back upon itself, and form is but illusion’s final veil.
We touch that which lies beyond only in those fleeting rare moments when the reality of form dissolves—through molecule and charge, the perfection of the meditative trance, orgasmic ego-loss, transcendent peaks of art, mayhap the instant of our death.
Vraiment, is not the history of man from pigments smeared on the walls of caves to our present starflung age, our sciences and arts, our religions and our philosophies, our cultures and our noble dreams, our heroics and our darkest deeds, but the dance of spirit round this central void, the striving to transcend, and the deadly fear of same?”

Norman Spinrad book The Void Captain's Tale

Source: The Void Captain's Tale (1983), Chapter 10 (p. 117)

Love, Death, Age, Fear

“If Darwin's discovery had been made in a Taoist or Shinto, Hindu or animist culture it would very likely have become just one more strand in its intertwining mythologies. In these faiths humans and other animals are kin. By contrast, arising among Christians who set humans beyond all other living things, it triggered a bitter controversy that rages on to this day.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Human: Science versus Humanism (p. 3-4)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Faith, Rage, Animals

“Poetry in America is no longer a dirty word. While it is still far from the center of the culture, it is moving slowly inward from the margins. I believe more and more people are shedding their outmoded notions of poetry as an exotic hobby--the result of bad teaching and worse public image problems--and coming to the realization that poetry is about their lives. Poetry is about them.”

Billy Collins (1941) American poet

Interview with Kritya: In the Name of Poetry

People, Problem

“[An elaborated culture has a] density, complexity, and historical-semantic value that is so strong as to make politics possible… Gramsci's insight is to have recognised that subordination, fracturing, diffusion, reproducing, as much as producing, creating, forcing, guiding, are necessary aspects of elaboration.”

Edward Said (1935–2003) Professor of English and literature

Quoted in Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-335-15275-9), p. 248

Strong

“The statute in section 3(1) contains a definition of a “racial group”. It means a “group of persons defined by reference to colour, race, nationality or ethnic or national origins.” That definition is very carefully framed. Most interesting is that it does not include religion or politics or culture. You can discriminate for or against Roman Catholics as much as you like without being in breach of the law. You can discriminate for or against Communists as much as you please, without being in breach of the law. You can discriminate for or against the “hippies” as much as you like, without being in breach of the law. But you must not discriminate against a man because of his colour or of his race or of his nationality, or of “his ethnic or national origins.” … You must remember that it is perfectly lawful to discriminate against groups of people to whom you object - so long as they are not a racial group. You can discriminate against the Moonies or the Skinheads or any other group which you dislike or to which you take objection. No matter whether your objection to them is reasonable or unreasonable, you can discriminate against them - without being in breach of the law.’}}”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

Denning judged in the Court of Appeal at the time, and held that Sikhs were not a racial or ethnic group. His ruling was overturned in the House of Lords, notably by Ian Fraser, Baron Fraser of Tullybelton, who outlined seven points by which ethno-religious groups were to be defined.
Judgments

People, Religion, Law, Personality

“The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty with a wall of erudition.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Avant-garde and Kitsch" (p. 85)
Modern Culture (2000)

Beauty

“Without need any longer of religious backing, capitalism may now have the power to shape people in its own image. Its conduct-forming spirit may be its own production. … Capitalism brings along with it, as part of its normal functioning, cultural forms affecting how subjects relate to themselves and to others. Capitalism has cultural concomitants—beliefs, values and norms—that help direct conduct—that get people to do willingly what capitalism requires of them—by encouraging them to see what they are doing and what they must do to get ahead as meaningful, valuable, or simply inevitable.”

Kathryn Tanner (1957) American theologian

"Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg6hztuaw2k&t=1002, Gifford Lecture, University of Edinburgh

People, Help, Parting

“A culture truly changes only when a new way of operating has been shown to succeed over some minimum period of time.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Step 8, p. 176
The Heart of Change, (2002)

Way, Change, Time

“To create a Fiji where people of different ethnicities, religions and cultures can live and work together for the good of all, can differ without rancour, govern without violence and accept responsibility as reasonable people intent on serving the best interest of all.”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

Excerpts from a speech to the Fiji Institute of Accountants, 28 April 2005

People, Religion

“Our conclusion is that the compañeros of the National Council of Culture are as concerned as all of you are about achieving the best conditions for the development of creative work by artists and intellectuals. It is the duty of the revolution and the revolutionary government to see that there is a highly qualified agency that can be relied upon to stimulate, encourage, develop and guide - yes, guide - that creative spirit.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Words to Intellectuals (1961)

“You could try and breed territoriality out of the bone, but like a bad fairy it popped up again and again in all sorts of guises and from all kinds of DNA. As long as there was plenty, then everyone was happy to pay culture its due, but as soon as there was trouble—bang, out came the demonization memes and, lo and behold, they were back to the Dark Ages faster than you could say “mattock.””

Justina Robson book Natural History

Source: Natural History (2003), Chapter 8 “Briefing” (p. 101)

Happiness, Age

“I think strategically China has come to a very crucial moment. They [the government] have to re-justify themselves. Even the past 20 to 30 years are based on a kind of destructive, suicidal act. Now they are trying to reach a higher level, but I think in any society, culture should have its own rights: not to be touched by the government, not to be promoted by the government, also not to be destroyed by the government.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Gill, Chris. “ Ai Weiwei: ‘To use art is not enough.’ http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/“To-use-art-is-not-enough”/19818” Art Newspaper, December 3, 2009. 2000-09, 2009

Thinking, Suicide, Past

“If we left the EU, we would end this sterile debate, and we would have to recognise that most of our problems are not caused by “Bwussels”, but by chronic British short-termism, inadequate management, sloth, low skills, a culture of easy gratification and underinvestment in both human and physical capital and infrastructure.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Telegraph article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10052646/Quitting-the-EU-wont-solve-our-problems-says-Boris-Johnson.html (12 May 2013) Peking university, Beijing (14 October 2013) Joint speech to students http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/14/boris-johnson-charm-offensive-china 2010s, 2013

Problem

“The belief in a Divine education, open to each man and to all men, takes up into itself all that is true in the end proposed by culture, supplements, and perfects it.”

John Campbell Shairp (1819–1885) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 504.

Men, Education, Perfection

“Bit by bit, as the legend unfolds, the reader gets a more accurate picture of the human race. By degrees, one gains the conviction that here is a race which can be little more than pure fantasy. It is not the kind of race which could rise from humble beginnings to the eminence of culture with which it is gifted in these tales. Its equipment is too poor.
So far it lack of stability has become apparent. Its preoccupation with a mechanical civilization rather than with a culture based on some of the sounder, more worthwhile concepts of life indicates a lack of basic character.
And now, in this tale, we learn of the limited communications which it possessed, a situation which certainly is not conducive to advancement. Man’s inability to understand and appreciate the thought and the viewpoint of another man would be a stumbling block which no amount of mechanical ability could overcome.”

Clifford D. Simak book City

Notes on the Fifth Tale (p. 119)
City (1952)

Life, Communication, Understanding, Learning

“This is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war at all. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies, Satan, would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country, the United States of America.”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

War, Thinking, Country

“Many of the animal rights vegans not only demand others adopted a vegan diet, they also want you to be vegan for their own personal reasons. These are “One of those” vegans. … There is a large vegan movement (that I hope isn’t a fad), and many have adopted the term “plant-based” for rebranding purposes. Maybe veganism will never be universally cool, but I don’t intend on stopping. I see nothing wrong with being compassionate towards animals. But not one of those. I’m not the stereotypical vegan. I’m not what people think about when they hear “Vegan”. I’m not white, I don’t do yoga, I’m not frail, and unlike the peaceful people you think of when you think vegan, I get road rage from time to time. … My reason for rebranding? I love being vegan so I hate that something I love is so culturally disliked.”

Cam F. Awesome (1988) American boxer

"Vegan…but not “one of those”" http://www.celebritysportsspeaker.com/vegan/noot/, in his website CelebritySportsSpeaker.com (May 28, 2018).

Love, Hate, People, Peace

“Politics is stuck in America today. We need to break through the stale debates and self-serving non-solutions that are coming from both political parties, and we need to do it without ending up at the "mushy middle," where there's no direction or principle. That's where the radical middle comes in. The radical middle is an attempt to break out of that stuckness in a fresh and principled way. It consists of everyone who's bold and yet savvy enough to want idealism without illusions – a fresh and hopeful vision that doesn't fall into the trap, as many leftists do, of looking back to chestnuts from the counter-culture of the Sixties and Seventies….”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Source: Radical Middle (2004), Chapter 1, "A Creative and Practical Politics," p. 5.

Hope, Way

“In its final stages the civilization becomes a dualism of almost totalitarian imperial power and an amorphous mass culture of atomized individuals.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

“The point of recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony unleashes one of the most horrifyingly violent episodes in the history of music…. The point is not to hold up Beethoven as exceptionally monstrous. The Ninth Symphony is probably our most compelling articulation in music of the contradictory impulses that have organized patriarchal culture since the Enlightenment. Moreover, within the parameters of his own musical compositions, he may be heard as enacting a critique of narrative obligations that is…devestating.”

Susan McClary (1946) American musicologist

McClary, Susan (1991). Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, p. 128-129. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0816618984.

Music, History

“Jewish success is due to a culture that promotes excellence, blessed with self discipline, education, dedication and a quest for leaving this world a better place.”

Nonie Darwish (1949) American activist

Address at the Feat of Tabernacles convention, Jerusalem (2007)

World, Education, Success

“Over periods of 10,000 years the distinctions between Western and Eastern and African cultures lose all meaning. Over a time span of 100,000 years we are all Africans. And over a time span of 300 million years we are all amphibians, waddling uncertainly out of dried-up ponds onto the alien and hostile land.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Hostility, Time

“Arnold must have for us the something of the character of what we nowadays have taken to calling a "culture hero": that is, a man who gives himself in full submission and sacrifice to his historical moment in order to comprehend and control the elements which that moment brings.”

Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) American academic

Introduction
The Portable Matthew Arnold (Viking Press, 1949)

“It has been said, "History is written by the victors." I take this to mean we can make ourselves victorious by writing, and then rewriting our own stories. In a country and culture so dominated by media, by the manipulation of words and stories, telling the tales of people whose stories historically have not been told is a radical act and I believe an act that can change the world and help rewrite history.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Speech at 4th Annual Power Up Premiere Gala, Los Angeles, California (7 November 2004) http://jennifer-beals.com/media/speeches/powerup.html.

People, World, History, Change

“The elder culture that is being improvised all around us day by day… promises to be the road toward a saner, more compassionate, more sustainable world—altogether, a more important turning point than ever presented itself in the 1960s… This, at last, is what the dissenting idealism of the 1960s was, in its highest and brightest expression, all about: a transformation of values that may finally reveal the goal of industrialization… In raising that possibility I cling to one hope. They grew up… reveling in their willingness to search beyond the limits of convention. …What Boomers left undone in their youth, they will return to take up in their maturity… we have won years back from death. That gives us the grand project of using those extra years to build a culture that is morally remarkable.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

The Making of an Elder Culture (2009)

Death, Youth, World, Hope

“There's a reason for poetry… Poetry is a very nonlinear use of language, where the meaning is more than just the sum of the parts. And science requires that it be nothing more than the sum of the parts. And just the fact that there's stuff to explain out there that's more than the sum of the parts means that the traditional approach, just characterizing the parts and the relations, is not going to be adequate for capturing the essence of many systems that you would like to be able to do. That's not to say that there isn't a way to do it in a more scientific way than poetry, but I just like the feeling that culturally there's going to be more of something like poetry in the future of science.”

Christopher Langton (1949) American computer scientist

Christopher Langton, as quoted by John Horgan, The End of Science (1996) p. 201.

Way, Feeling, Science, Future

“The church of Jesus needs to wake up from the exile of passivity and embrace liminality and adventure or continue to remain a religious ghetto for culturally co-opted, fearful, middle-class folk.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 92

Fear

“In our libertarian society, where individual choice is all, ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ have come to mean something very different. Liberals took for granted that freedom depended upon self-discipline. Libertarians decided that all such restraint was repressive. The individual had to be free from all attachments to family, culture, nation, institutions and traditions that might fetter freedom of choice. Since every individual was equally entitled to such free choices, the distinctions that were the basis of morality became eroded.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/2000_01.html

Family, Freedom, Dependency

“Helene Lange throughout her life insisted that the dissimiliarity of the sexes must be emphasized in order that the feminine nature be freely developed and properly formed. Only then might this nature achieve its own cultural fulfillment, an achievement indeed necessary in our time as a suitable compensation for the obvious effects of our masculine Western culture; then feminine nature might be capable of authentic human formation and an activity of helping love.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), Problems of Women's Education (1932)

Love, Life, Sex, Nature

“The efforts must be shared between those who welcome and those who wish to integrate. The acceptance of the basic rules of our society, of our democratic ideas, of our ways of life and our cultural plurality are a precondition which cannot be argued against.”

Henri of Luxembourg (1955) Grand Duke (head of state) of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

Sécher: déi, déi empfänken an also doheem sinn, an déi, déi sech wëllen integréieren, musse gewëllt sinn, openeen zouzegouen. Dobäi muss all Säit d’Basisregelen vun eiser Gesellschaft, eis demokratesch Idealer, eis Liewensaart an eise kulturelle Pluralismus bereet sinn ze respektéieren. Ouni dat geet et net. Speech on National Day, http://www.monarchie.lu/fr/actualites/discours/2014/06/23062014-fetnat/index.html (23 June 2014) Luxembourg, Immigration

Life, Way, Idea, Effort

“Many of the great achievements in history that are commonly attributed to one geo-cultural domain often owe a great debt to those of others. In this sense, some of the greatest achievements of human civilisation have been collective efforts and are part of the same human story.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.14

History, Sense, Effort, Parting

“America is today without the necessary information upon which to proceed intelligently. Much of the propaganda essential to winning the war has made the ground look like a battlefield after a tank has passed over it ploughed deep but unfit for culture for some time to come. Nowhere is there a clear authoritative statement of the contribution of the various races as such to America. Nowhere is there, an analysis of what they have brought or can bring, and of all that material which we have not used. Nowhere is there information as to what they take or of what they want most from America. Tons of literature are printed and sent out daily by all kinds of agencies, with seldom a consultation with the foreigner as to how it fits the needs of his race. We ignore in most racial meetings the knowledge which is there outlined, and violate very nearly every sound principle of race psychology. We get as a result the minds of the newcomers but not their hearts; their respectful attention but not their conversion. We get their cash contributions for American war activities and charities, but we do not succeed in creating in them the desire to stay here permanently.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

War, Intelligence, Literature, Knowledge

“The linguistic domain as a domain of orienting behavior requires at least two interacting organisms with comparable domains of interactions, so that a cooperative system of consensual interactions may be developed in which the emerging conduct of the two organisms is relevant for both. The specifiability through learning of the orienting interactions allows for a purely consensual (cultural) evolution in this domain, without it necessarily involving any further evolution of the nervous system; for this reason the linguistic domain in general, and the domain of self-consciousness in particular, are, in principle, independent of the biological substratum that generates them.”

Humberto Maturana (1928) Chilean biologist and philosopher

Source: Biology of Cognition (1970), p. 43.

Behavior, Learning

“It is the body that is immortal. It is living from moment to moment. As a human body it is an extraordinary piece of creation. But as a human being he is rotten because of the culture.”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Quoted in The Sage And the Housewife (2005) by Shanta Kelker, Ch. 3

“The promise of technology is to remove the division between culture and nature. Whatever part of nature that is left over as an independent force is covered by the technological bluff, which refers it to the agenda of the future and disguises the deficiencies of the present.”

Donald Phillip Verene (1937) philosopher

Source: Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge (1997), p. 179

Nature, Future, Parting

“In the sixties, the recycling of pop culture — turning it into Pop art and camp — had its own satirical zest. Now we're into a different kind of recycling. Moviemakers give movies of the past an authority that those movies didn't have; they inflate images that may never have compelled belief, images that were no more than shorthand gestures — and they use them not as larger-than-life jokes but as altars.”

Pauline Kael book State of the Art

"A Bad Dream/A Masterpiece," review of The Moon in the Gutter (1983-09-19), p. 48.
State of the Art (1985)

Life, Art, Past

“Cultural imperialism involved, among many other things, exploration, missionary and humanitarian missions, travel, and the use of education and publishing to disseminate European ideas.”

George Ritzer (1940) American sociologist

Source: Globalization - A Basic Text (2010), Chapter 3, Related Processes I: Imperialism, Colonialism, and More, p. 67

Education, Travel, Idea

“Islam and globanalisation', or giving European and American space to Muslim names to denounce their own Islamic phantasms, is a new phase in the social manufacturing of domination -- using nominal Muslims against Islamic abstractions. This -- pitting lapsed Muslims against Islamic sensibilities -- is ultimately an exercise in futility. The fate of the globe, Europe included, is written elsewhere, somewhere between the lines of massive labour migration, on one side, and the global reconfiguration of the capital that systematically seeks to abuse it, on the other. The culture war this has occasioned in the meantime is a murderous nightmare for many, a lucrative pastime for some, a headache for others, and yet at the end an entirely negligible footnote to history.”

Hamid Dabashi (1951) American academic

Islam and Globanalisation http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/787/cu4.htm Polish Translation. http://www.uni.wroc.pl/~turowski/dabashi.htm#note

Fate, War, Exercises, History

“America, the great liberator, is in desperate need of being liberated from itself -- from its own excesses and arrogance. And the world needs to be liberated from American values and culture, spreading across the planet as if by divine providence.”

Kalle Lasn (1942) Estonian-Canadian film maker, author, magazine editor and activist

Cultural Jam (2000)

World

“Sex is the refuge of the mindless. And the more mindless the woman, the more deeply embedded in the male "culture," in short, the nicer she is, the more sexual she is. The nicest women in our "society" are raving sex maniacs.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 12.

Women, Sex

“I’ve been a vegetarian for 14 years, just about my entire racing career. The past 3 years I’ve been completely vegan, which means I don’t use any animal products whatsoever. … Hard training is, at its essence, a process of making yourself almost sick with work, recovering from it, and adapting to it. … Adequate protein intake from plant sources should not be a concern if you’re consuming the right foods. Again, the primary mistake to avoid is to define your vegetarianism by what you don’t eat, rather than what you do. If you use vegetarianism as an opportunity to explore new dietary options, particularly from cultures that have a tradition of vegetarianism, you should find that you eat a wider, rather than narrower, variety of foods.”

Adam Myerson (1972) American professional bicycle racer

"The Vegetarian Athlete, Part I" https://web.archive.org/web/20041225183944/http://www.cycle-smart.com/Articles/find.php?search=37, on his website Cycle-Smart (2004).

Food, Past, Animals, Training

“The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"America First? America Last? America at Last?" https://archive.is/20121212151230/www.dce.harvard.edu/pubs/lowell/gvidal.html, Lowell Lecture, Harvard University (20 April 1992) 1990s

Women, God, Age, Religion

“It is proposed that a form of free dialogue may well be one of the most effective ways of investigating the crisis which faces society, and indeed the whole of human nature and consciousness today. Moreover, it may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity can be liberated.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

Collaborations with others, Science Order, and Creativity (1987)

Way, Idea, Nature

“Male privilege' is assuming one has the right to occupy any space or person by whatever means, with or without permission. It's a sense of entitlement that's unique to those who have been raised male in most cultures - it's notably absent in most girls and women. Male privilege is not something that's given to men in this culture; it's something that men take. It's not that women don't have the ability to have and wield this privilege; some do. It's that in most cases, this privilege is withheld from them culturally and emotionally. Male privilege is woven into all levels of the culture, from unearned higher wages to more opportunities in the workplace, from higher quality, less expensive clothing to better bathroom facilities. Male privilege extends into sexual harassment, rape, and war. Combine male privilege with capitalism (which rewards greed and acquisition) and the mass media (which, owned by capitalists, highlights only the reward of acquisition and makes invisible its penalties), and you have a juggernaut that needs stopping by any means. Male privilege is not the exclusive province of men; there are some few women who have a degree of this horrifying personality trait. Male privilege is, in a word, violence.”

Kate Bornstein (1948) American author, playwright, performance artist, and gender theorist

Source: Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us (1995), p. 108

Women, Men, War, Penalty

“An intellectual … lives for ideas—which means that he has a sense of dedication to the life of the mind which is very much like a religious commitment. This is not surprising, for in a very important way the role of the intellectual is inherited from the office of the cleric: it implies a special sense of the ultimate value in existence of the act of comprehension. Socrates, when he said that the unexamined life is not worth living, struck the essence of it. We can hear the voices of various intellectuals in history repeating their awareness of this feeling, in accents suitable to time, place and culture. “The proper function of the human race, taken in the aggregate,” wrote Dante in De Monarchia, “is to actualize continually the entire capacity possible to the intellect, primarily in speculation, then through its extension and for its sake, secondarily in action.””

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

The noblest thing, and the closest possible to divinity, is thus the act of knowing.
Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), pp. 27-28

Life, Way, Feeling, History

“LONG LIVE THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION!”

Abbie Hoffman book Woodstock Nation

Down on Me and Janis Joplin
Woodstock Nation (1969)

“Wise command, wise obedience: the capability of these two is the net measure of culture, and human virtue, in every man; all good lies in the possession of these two capabilities; all evil, wretchedness and ill-success in the want of these.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

Evil, Success

“We are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what it's worth.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Eros and the Eschaton http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_WW9z0_Eu0& lecture (1994)

“The rest of my life belongs to my culture, my language, my God and my nation.”

Eugène Terre'Blanche (1941–2010) South African police officer, farmer, political activist, white supremacist

Interview by Antoinette Keyser http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=249083&area=/insight/insight__national/, (25 August 2005).

Life, God

“Meat is a cultural construct made to seem natural and inevitable. By the time the argument from analogy with carnivorous animals is made, the individual making such an argument has probably consumed animals since before the time she or he could talk. Rationalizations for consuming animals were probably offered when this individual at age four or five was discomforted upon discovering that meat came from dead animals. The taste of dead flesh preceded the rationalizations, and offered a strong foundation for believing the rationalizations to be true.”

Carol J. Adams (1951) author, animal rights activist

“Ecofeminism and the Eating of Animals”, in Ecological Feminist Philosophies, edited by Karen J. Warren (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 124.

Age, Nature, Strong, Time

“Our Judeo-Christian culture is far superior to the Islamic one. I can give you a million reasons. But here is an important one. We have got humor and they don't. There is no humor in Islam. … Islam does not allow free speech, because free speech shows how evil and wrong Islam is. And Islam does not allow humor, because humor shows how foolish and ridiculous it is.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Speech at Muhammad Cartoon Contest, Garland, Texas (3 May 2015) http://geertwilders.nl/index.php/94-english/1924-speech-geert-wilders-at-muhammad-cartoon-contest-garland-texas-3-may-2015 2010s

Evil

Quotes about culture page 10

Quotes about culture
page 10