Quotes About Culture

Laughter is America's most important export.

As soon as discussion begins the savage propensities of men break forth; even in modern communities, where those propensities, too, have been weakened by ages of culture, and repressed by ages of obedience, as soon as a vital topic for discussion is well started the keenest and most violent passions break forth. Easily destroyed as are early free states by forces from without, they are even more liable to destruction by forces from within.

The products of art and science owe their existence not merely to the effort of the great geniuses that created them, but also to the unnamed drudgery of their contemporaries. There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.

Humanity's self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.

In that world where jingles replace doxology, God is not free and the people know no justice or compassion.

To be "defiled" by empire is to be robbed of a distinct identity that permits freedom against dominant culture. "Fasting" as alert abstention may be the order of the day that will make the asking of prayers more serious and compelling.

One Way to think of the market ideology and the empire is that it produces alienation and loss of human vitality. The culture flows from the assumption that the accumulation of commodities will make us safe and happy.

The dominant ideology of our culture is committed to continuity and success and to the avoidance of pain, hurt, and loss. The dominant culture is also resistant to genuine newness and real surprise. It is curious but true, that surprise is as unwelcome as is loss. And our culture is organized to prevent the experience of both.

The alternative to the free market consumer culture is a set of covenants that supports neighborly disciplines, rather than market disciplines, as a producer of culture. These non-market disciplines have to do with the common good and abundance as opposed to self-interest and scarcity. This neighborly culture is held together by its depth of relatedness, its capacity to hold mystery, its willingness to stretch time and endure silence.

The contemporary American church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or to act.

The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.2

The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.

Our consumer culture is organized against history. There is a depreciation of memory and a ridicule of hope, which means everything must be held in the now, either an urgent now or an eternal now.

Culture is not a plant sprouting from its seed in isolation; it is a continuous process of learning guided by curiosity along with practical needs and interests. It grows especially from a willingness to learn from what is 'other', what is strange and foreign.

The Study of Society: A Unified Approach. The

Baseball isn't a business, it's more like a disease.

I've been told my old city possesses a 'thriving arts scene,' whatever that is; personally, I think artists should lie low and stick to their work, not line-dance through the parks.

Because it is such a powerful force in the world today, the Western Judeo-Christian tradition is often accepted as the arbiter of 'natural' behavior of humans. If Europeans and their descendant nations of North America accept something as normal, then anything different is seen as abnormal. Such a view ignores the great diversity of human experience.

Valentin Rasputin

Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.

By the term cult I mean nothing derogatory to any group so classified. A cult, as I define it, is any religious group which differs significantly in one or more respects as to belief or practice from those religious groups which are regarded as the normative expressions of religion in our total culture.

I'm not saying that you have to be a reader to save your soul in the modern world. I'm saying it helps.