Quotes About Culture

There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries.

He was like a man who had served a term in prison or had been to Harvard College or had lived for a long time with foreigners in South America.

There was something about speaking in a foreign language that made her feel like she'd been around a lot.

Sometimes I can be walking down the street, or riding a bus, and suddenly I see somebody who remind me of somebody I know back home, and I close my eyes and find myself thinking of the sea, or the taste of grafted mango, or the smell of saltfish frying, and then I come back to myself and open my eyes and realise where I am.

Asked to resolve problems in a language that is not their own, people are less likely to depart from standard accounts of rationality.

Le tournant fut annoncé en 1931 par un ouvrage de Julian Huxley, zoologue à l'université de Londres (et frère du romancier Aldous Huxley). Il y rejette, précisément au nom de la génétique, la notion de race, « terme de pure convenance pour aider à appréhender la diversité humaine10 ».

but is in danger from the American evil of commercializing even the sacred festivals.

A transformation or shift in one's conception of the cultural self can be difficult to explain to those who have not experienced a sudden shift in identity. (p. 44)

Depending upon the nature of the cultural information received, the Métis person might decide to identify as First Nations exclusively. Some people may choose to identify as both First Nations and Métis; it is the federal government that requires people to choose one of the two. (p. 45)

Widespread cultural suffering for Métis people began around the time when the fur trade was nearing its end and the colonial period was beginning (Mackie, 1996) - p. 38

when cultural stories remain hidden and untold, they tend to disappear, at least temporarily, leaving one with a void of information about the self. (p.38)

Métis writer Joeanne Arnott (1994) notes that, passing is one of the very few options for survival of a mixed-race people in virulently racist society (59). The decision to withhold important information about cultural ancestry is one that causes pain and suffering in the long term. (p.39)

Métis cultural stories play a crucial role in helping new Métis (those who have been denied their culture) to recreate their sense of self. (p. 37)

the story of Métis people choose to not speak openly about their ancestry may be the most common thread in Métis stories. (p. 32)

The more one realizes they are on a journey to find out who they are (where they come from, who their family is) when this information has been denied, the more it can be understood as a journey back to culture and identity... Stories can be a part of the glue that binds the personal with the social, allowing us to feel part of something greater. (p. 19)

Long ago, there lived a people

I can't just open myself up the way some people can. And down here, you're raised a certain way. You're taught to keep some things private, family matters especially. It's just the way it's done. Everyone worships the past but no one really wants to talk about it.

Oh, this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is.

Above Constance's desk were nude photographs of women in 1930s France, draped in provocative poses. She had put them there for Bob's viewing pleasure and in return he had placed African art of naked men above his desk for her.

My name is Asher Lev... I am a traitor, an apostate, a self-hater, an inflicter of shame upon my family, my friends, my people; also, I am a mocker of ideas sacred to Christians, a blasphemous manipulator of modes and forms revered by Gentiles for two thousand years.

Every artist is a man who has freed himself from his family, his nation, his race. Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'universal' without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere.

In Russia I went to a great yeshiva, and in America I work in a carnival.

Without stories there is nothing. Stories are the world's memory. The past is erased without stories.

every great artist is a man who has freed himself from his family, his nation, his race. Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a "universal" without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere.