Quotes about culture
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Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“The food in the South is as important as food anywhere because it defines a person's culture.”
Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 6 : 'Hunger', p. 187
Source: Boogers Are My Beat: More Lies, But Some Actual Journalism!
“Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.”
Source: Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991
Source: Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now
“What a culture we live in, we are swimming in an ocean of information, and drowning in ignorance.”
Source: A Step of Faith
Source: The Woman Destroyed
“Ours is a culture and a time immensely rich in trash as it is in treasures.”
Source: Zen in the Art of Writing
“While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea”
Source: Howards End
Source: 1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967), p. 26
Source: The Medium is the Massage
“We live in a culture where everything tastes good but nothing satisfies.”
World Policy Journal, "Reflections", Volume XXI, No 2, Summer 2004 Available Online https://web.archive.org/web/20080616055809/http://www.worldpolicy.org:80/journal/articles/wpj04-2/Tharoor.html
2000s
Ch. 12 : The West, Civilizations, and Civilization, § 2 : The West In The World, p. 310
Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 12 : The West, Civilizations, and Civilization, § 2 : The West In The World, p. 308
Context: Normatively the Western universalist belief posits that people throughout the world should embrace Western values, institutions, and culture because they embody the highest, most enlightened, most liberal, most rational, most modern, and most civilized thinking of humankind.
In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.
Context: Cultural and civilizational diversity challenges the Western and particularly American belief in the universal relevance of Western culture. This belief is expressed both descriptively and normatively. Descriptively it holds that peoples in all societies want to adopt Western values, institutions, and practices. If they seem not to have that desire and to be committed to their own traditional cultures, they are victims of a “false consciousness” comparable to that which Marxists found among proletarians who supported capitalism. Normatively the Western universalist belief posits that people throughout the world should embrace Western values, institutions, and culture because they embody the highest, most enlightened, most liberal, most rational, most modern, and most civilized thinking of humankind.
In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous. … The belief that non-Western peoples should adopt Western values, institutions, and culture is immoral because of what would be necessary to bring it about. The almost-universal reach of European power in the late nineteenth century and the global dominance of the United States in the late twentieth century spread much of Western civilization across the world. European globalism, however, is no more. American hegemony is receding if only because it is no longer needed to protect the United States against a Cold War-style Soviet military threat. Culture, as we have argued, follows power. If non-Western societies are once again to be shaped by Western culture, it will happen only as a result of the expansion, deployment, and impact of Western power. Imperialism is the necessary logical consequence of universalism. In addition, as a maturing civilization, the West no longer has the economic or demographic dynamism required to impose its will on other societies and any effort to do so is also contrary to the Western values of self-determination and democracy. As Asian and Muslim civilizations begin more and more to assert the universal relevance of their cultures, Westerners will come to appreciate more and more the connection between universalism and imperialism.
Context: A world in which cultural identities — ethnic, national, religious, civilizational — are central, and cultural affinities and differences shape the alliances, antagonisms, and policies of states has three broad implications for the West generally and for the United States in particular.
First, statesmen can constructively alter reality only if they recognize and understand it. The emerging politics of culture, the rising power of non-Western civilizations, and the increasing cultural assertiveness of these societies have been widely recognized in the non-Western world. European leaders have pointed to the cultural forces drawing people together and driving them apart. American elites, in contrast, have been slow to accept and to come to grips with these emerging realities.
Source: Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism
“Changes in language often reflect the changing values of a culture.”
Source: The Beauty Myth
Part 1, Ch. 3
Source: Mao II (1991)
Context: There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists... Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.
“Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.”
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Source: Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Source: Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
“It must be recognized that in any culture the source of law is the god of that society.”
Audio lectures, Dominion (n. d.)
Source: The Institutes of Biblical Law, Volume 1 of 3
Context: Now a sovereign, a Lord, is always the source of law. Law making is the pejorative of the Lord or sovereign of a God. In every religious faith, in every religion, in every culture, the God of that system provides the laws. They are of his making. And if you allow any other law to come in you are acknowledging another God. This is why in Europe when the doctrine of the Divine right of kings arose there was a militant hostility on the part of the keys for any aspect of Biblical law. And the war against Biblical law began under the kings of Europe as monarchies began to rise in the late middle ages.
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
1960s, Remarks at the signing of the Immigration Bill (1965)
Context: This bill says simply that from this day forth those wishing to immigrate to America shall be admitted on the basis of their skills and their close relationship to those already here. This is a simple test, and it is a fair test. Those who can contribute most to this country; to its growth, to its strength, to its spirit; will be the first that are admitted to this land. The fairness of this standard is so self-evident that we may well wonder that it has not always been applied. Yet the fact is that for over four decades the immigration policy of the United States has been twisted and has been distorted by the harsh injustice of the national origins quota system. Under that system the ability of new immigrants to come to America depended upon the country of their birth. Only 3 countries were allowed to supply 70 percent of all the immigrants. Families were kept apart because a husband or a wife or a child had been born in the wrong place. Men of needed skill and talent were denied entrance because they came from southern or eastern Europe or from one of the developing continents. This system violated the basic principle of American democracy; the principle that values and rewards each man on the basis of his merit as a man. It has been un-American in the highest sense, because it has been untrue to the faith that brought thousands to these shores even before we were a country. Today, with my signature, this system is abolished. We can now believe that it will never again shadow the gate to the American nation with the twin barriers of prejudice and privilege. Our beautiful America was built by a nation of strangers. From a hundred different places or more they have poured forth into an empty land, joining and blending in one mighty and irresistible tide. The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources; because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples. And from this experience, almost unique in the history of nations, has come America's attitude toward the rest of the world. We, because of what we are, feel safer and stronger in a world as varied as the people who make it up; a world where no country rules another and all countries can deal with the basic problems of human dignity and deal with those problems in their own way. Now, under the monument which has welcomed so many to our shores, the American nation returns to the finest of its traditions today. The days of unlimited immigration are past. But those who do come will come because of what they are, and not because of the land from which they sprung.
“One must not judge other cultures by the standars of one's one,' said Aunt Hilda”
Source: The Morning Gift
Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
"A Cult of Ignorance", Newsweek (21 January 1980) http://media.aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf
General sources
Context: There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
Unspecified edition, p. 225.
Source: On Beauty (2005)
“Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have.”
Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Source: And Another Thing...
Source: 1930s, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. 322
Context: Historically our own culture has relied for the creation of rich and contrasting values upon many artificial distinctions, the most striking of which is sex. It will not be by the mere abolition of these distinctions that society will develop patterns in which individual gifts are given place instead of being forced into an ill-fitting mould. If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.
Source: The World Peace Diet (2005), Ch. 12
Source: The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony
“I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.”
Source: Under the Tuscan Sun
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 42
"BOG VENUS VERSUS NAZI COCK-RING: Some Thoughts Concerning Pornography" in Arthur magazine, Vol. 1, No. 25 (November 2006) http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?p=1685
Source: 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom
Context: Sexually progressive cultures gave us mathematics, literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust. Not that I’m trying to load my argument, of course.
Source: The God Delusion
“Culture, when it comes to food, is of course a fancy word for your mom.”
Source: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
Source: Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising
“Culture and education are the lethal weapons against all kinds of fundamentalism.”
Source: Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
La forme bâtarde de la culture de masse est la répétition honteuse: on répète les contenus, les schèmes idéologiques, le gommage des contradictions, mais on varie les formes superficielles: toujours des livres, des émissions, des films nouveaux, des faits divers, mais toujours le même sens.
"Modern," in The Pleasure of the Text (1975)
“America is the first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death.”
Source: Don't Waste Your Life
Source: Tuesdays with Morrie
“Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.”
Variant: You can't consume much if you sit still and read books.
Source: Brave New World (1932), Ch. 3<!-- p. 50 -->
Source: 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), p. 1
Source: A People's History of the United States
Source: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography
Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 208.
Context: I received an impassioned letter from Sonoko. There was no doubt that she was truly in love. I felt jealous. Mine was the unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. Or can there be such a thing in this world as a man who is jealous of the woman who loves him, precisely because of her love?
Source: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
Changing Consciousness (1991)
Context: Culture is shared meaning. Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture. <!-- p. 185
Source: Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
Source: Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope
Source: remembered rapture: the writer at work
Thomas Jefferson, In Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from the Papers of T. Jefferson (1829), Vol. 1, 144
Posthumous publications, On botany
Source: The Quotable Jefferson
"Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 155.
1930s
Source: Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold
Source: The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), p. 29
“Don't let the culture influence your message, let your message influence the culture.”
Source: Suite Française