Quotes About Culture

There was something ghost-like and insubstantial about gases to these early chemists. They called liquids that turned into gases easily, spirits. Methyl alcohol, they called wood spirit; ethyl alcohol, wine spirit. Even today, alcoholic beverages are frequently referred to as spirits. (Modern Arabs, from whose language the word alcohol was taken, call ethyl alcohol spirit from the English. This is a queer exchange.)

In short, the age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate. Now that is gone, and the youngsters have their glazed eyes fixed on the television tube. The result is clear. True literacy is becoming an arcane art, and the nation is steadily dumbing down.

It's out of fashion in these decaying times to be a scholar.

I do. It's a mass psychosis, an unprintable mob panic. Ga-LAX-y, Randu, what do you expect? Here you have a whole culture brought up to a blind, blubbering belief that a folk hero of the past has everything all planned out and is taking care of every little piece of their unprintable lives. The thought-pattern evoked has religious characteristics, and you know what that means.

Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

nunca cometía la equivocación de ser demasiado educado con un hombre de la Fundación. Él podía ser un extranjero, pero un hombre siempre es un hombre.

The Foundation, as he says, was established as a scientific refuge – the means by which the science and culture of the dying Empire was to be preserved through the centuries of barbarism that have begun, to be rekindled in the end into a second Empire.

La religión es una de las grandes influencias civilizadoras de la historia

It's out of fashion in these decaying times to be a scholar.

En mi respuesta le decía: Avram, tú y yo somos judíos que vivimos en un país que es no judío en un noventa y cinco por ciento y nos las arreglamos bastante bien. Me pregunto cómo nos desenvolveríamos, Avram, si fuéramos gentiles y viviéramos en un país con un noventa y cinco por ciento de judíos ortodoxos. Memorias

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.

Dictatorships, wars, and cruelty drive whole countries to madness. My theory is that the human species was crazy from the very first and that civilization and culture are only enhancing man's insanity. A Tale of Two Sisters

Wir Juden haben die Völker mit einem ewigen Gott belastet, und darum hassen sie uns.

In Russia, there was one cure for every illness—vodka.

She had learned to drink in Russia.

The talk about culture and justice was more revolting than the barbarism and injustice.

Although I had turned away from the Jewish path i still carried the diaspora on me

I've been so thoroughly incorporated into the California culture that I practice meditation and go to a therapist, even though I always set a trap: during my meditation I invent stories to keep from being bored, and in therapy I invent stories to keep from boring the psychologist.

Multitud de niñas ricas con mente pobre.

He armado la idea de mi país como un rompecabezas, seleccionando aquellas piezas que se ajustan a mi diseño e ignorando las demás.

In the Chinese language, do you know what the characters for 'crisis' are? 'Danger' plus 'opportunity.

Those native peoples were confounded by the mystery of the crucified man the whites worshipped, and they could not understand the advantage of living contrary to their inclinations in this world in order to enjoy a hypothetical well-being in another.

Los chilenos veneran al Papa, pero no le hacen caso en asuntos sexuales y sus concecuencias, porque un anciano celibe, de buen pasar economico, que no ha trabajado en su vida, poco sabe de eso.

I had a serious library at my disposal, because my Popo believed that culture entered by osmosis and it was better to start early, but my favorite books were fairy tales.