Quotes About Culture

dream in Irish. We laugh in Irish and we cry in German. We are silent in German and we speak in English. We are the speckled people.

The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot - and it's only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid impotent fear. (In a letter dated 9-26-58)

The importance of Liking Yourself is a notion that fell heavily out of favor during the coptic, anti-ego frenzy of the Acid Era—but nobody guessed, back then, that the experiment might churn up this kind of hangover: a whole subculture of frightened illiterates with no faith in anything.

Arriving half-drunk in a foreign place is hard on the nerves. You have a feeling that something is wrong, that you can't get a grip.

You forget where you are," he said. "What right do you have to come here and cause trouble, and then tell us to speak your language?

Today we do not live under a sacred canopy; it is marketing that forms the backdrop of our culture. The message that advertising dins into our conscious and unconscious minds is that fulfillment derives from the things we possess.

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

That's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead.

In a 2002 interview with Science Fiction Weekly magazine, when asked: Excession is particularly popular because of its copious detail concerning the Ships and Minds of the Culture, its great AIs: their outrageous names, their dangerous senses of humour. Is this what gods would actually be like? Banks replied: If we're lucky.

There's something very... I don't know; primitive, perhaps, about you, Gurgeh. You've never changed sex, have you?' He shook his head. 'Or slept with a man?' Another shake. 'I thought so,' Yay said. 'You're strange, Gurgeh.' She drained her glass.

Horza recalled that the Culture's attitude to somebody who believed in an omnipotent God was to pity them, and to take no more notice of the substance of their faith than one would take of the ramblings of somebody claiming to be Emperor of the Universe. The nature of the belief wasn't totally irrelevant - along with the person's background and upbringing, it might tell you something about what had gone wrong with them - but you didn't take their views seriously .

How do we justify calling ourselves civilised, after all? Is it the books we read? The delicacy of our tastes? Our place in continuing a line of belief ando of common values which strech back a thousand years and more? All this, indeed, but what does it mean? How does it show itself? Are you civilised if you read the right books, yet stand by while your neighbours ara massacred, your lanas laid waste, your cities brought to ruin?»

An in experienced traveler would imagine that their land contains the finest buildings, the biggest towns, the richest, best-fed, happiest people in the world.

The English can lose their friends.

Há uma velha regra que minhas irmãs me ensinaram. Sempre que você se encontrar com uma garota, faça-o em algum lugar bem conhecido. Os restaurantes franceses não impressionam se você não conseguir ler o menu, e filmes intelectuais são um tiro pela culatra se você não compreende a trama.

The platform that anime builds on, therefore, is not only characters and worlds but also the social energy that attaches to them.

It might be said that much work in cultural studies tends to center on an analysis of individuals as part of such larger social groups, especially race, class, and gender. Yet it might be beneficial to reconsider our scales of analysis in the process of doing ethnographic research by thinking in terms of relatively small social networks.

The textbook was born from analyzing actual movements, but these were still the exaggerated gestures of Europeans and Americans They portrayed 'Western (bata-kusai; lit., smelling of butter)' movements, like the way some Japanese who have lived abroad will spread their arms and shake their head when they say 'Oh no!

Of course there are some bad ones,' he said. 'Some of the worst anywhere. Harlem's the capital of the negro world. In any half a million people of any race you'll get plenty of stinkeroos.

America's a civilized country. More or less.

there was no beatnik movement in Germany because there were now no traditions to revolt against;

The U.S. has the most prestigious schools in the world. Harvard University was founded in 1636, with the motto veritas: Latin, for truth. Yale University was founded in 1701 with the motto lux et veritas: light and truth. Even the fictional Faber College from Animal House was founded in 1904 under the motto Knowledge is Good. Then there's Liberty University, founded by the late, hardly lamented Jerry Falwell. Their motto: Training Champions for Christ since 1971. Here

Ultimately, we get what we ask for. The culture has been dumbed down for our consumption because we consume it. Junk food wouldn't sell if we didn't eat it. Crap movies wouldn't get produced if we didn't pay to see them. Crap TV wouldn't get made if we didn't watch it. We're not only what we eat. We're also what we see and what we buy. Our culture is a reflection of who we are and how we think. We have met the enemy and he is us. Whether

It was always the view of my parents, Emily said, that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.