Quotes About Culture

Sex-appeal is the keynote of our whole civilization.

Jews don't drink much because it interferes with their suffering.

And the only culture she gets is the one she decimates with bleach.

The martini is the supreme American gift to world culture.

Americans are rather like bad Bulgarian wine; the don't travel well.

With Suzuki, the commonsensical approach that would see Zen as a product of Japanese culture is inverted, and Japanese culture becomes a multifaceted expression of a unique phenomenon, or rather of a metaphysical principle named Zen.

Although some religious traditions may promote inner detachment vis-à-vis political systems, most religions tend to be politically conservative and nationalistic and Zen has been no exception in this regard.

With [D. T.] Suzuki, Zen coopted the whole field of Japanese culture and, imposing on Japanese ideology the myth of transparency, claimed the status of a transcendental spirituality. With Nishida [Kitar?] and the Kyoto school, Zen acquired a crosscultural philosophical status. Thus, through the work of Suzuki, Nishida and their successors, a new field of discourse was created—one that differs markedly from the earlier Chan/Zen discourse (s) it claimed to replicate or interpret.

I am what the librarians have made me with a little assistance from a professor of Greek and a few poets.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilisation from destroying itself." (Interview, New York Post Magazine , September 14, 1958)

We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.

In the Islamic world, to welcome a traveler in one's home and treat him as best as possible is the believer's duty. To be hospitable (misafirperver), he explains, means that for you, a good Muslim, it is your duty to treat your guest (misafir), the traveler, with the utmost respect.

Turkish drivers are maniacs.

A school's version of fun can never compete with the street's version of fun.

To know the difference between erotica and pornography you must first know the difference between naked and nude.

Immorality sanctified by tradition is still immorality.

Courtney added that as she only fancies black men and is likely going to have mixed-race children, her 'white privilege' is in any case going to be seriously dented, like at least 50% of it, and it's incredible in this day and age that she'd never met any black people in the flesh before she came to university from Dartingford which is entirely white except for three Asians

African peoples were referred to as black long after the word made its appearance in the English language, so it makes no sense to retroactively impose racist connotations on to its everyday usage, and if you do, you're going to drive yourself mad and, I'm sorry to say, everyone else with you

life was different before 9/11, Waris said, as they left the town behind and walked along a busy main road passing big old houses made of thick slabs of grey stone; she was too young to remember the 'before era', when her mother said people looked at hijabbed women with surprise, curiosity or pity

her favourite writers are Olive Senior from Jamaica, Rosa Guy from Trinidad, Paule Marshall from Barbados, Jamaica Kincaid from Antigua, and Maryse Condé from Guadeloupe

I tell Mum she married a patriarch Look at it this way, Amma, she says, your father was born male in Ghana in the 1920s whereas you were born female in London in the 1960s And your point is? You really can't expect him to 'get you', as you put it I let her know she's an apologist for the patriarchy and complicit in a system that oppresses all women She says human beings are complex I tell her not patronize me

She looks over at the Tate on the opposite side of the river, where she occasionally wanders the galleries to clear her head during lunchtime (when she takes one), to marvel at the ability of artists to make such mind-blowing creations out of their imagination Imagination What was that? Does she even have one?

He'll be moulded by America, that's for sure, just by being there. He won't even be aware it's happening. He'll be filled with the American sense of self-belief, and the sense of can-do, and the Harvard sense of entitlement.

Nenet always insisted she was Mediterranean