Quotes About Culture

Perhaps 90 percent of its desires, psychologists say, are unconscious; in other words, many of our deepest commitments to symbols of security, power, and affection in the culture are rooted in desires that are absolutely impossible to achieve.

The fact of Native existence is that we live modern lives informed by traditional values and contemporary realities and that we wish to live those lives in our terms.

It was just another of those sharp shards of bigotry you find when you run your fingers across the Canadian mosaic.

More than that, in the five hundred years of European OCCUPATION, Native cultures have already driven themselves to be remarkably tenacious and resilient.

Most of us think that history is the past. It's not. History is the stories we tell about the past. That's all it is.

The resort had been a sanitary bubble designed to shield you from the realities of culture and to limit your interaction with the local people. They were there to serve you, and you were there in your role as an ATM with a camera.

The truth about stories is, that's all we are.

While the hardware of civilization - iron pots, blankets, guns - was welcomed by Native people, the software of Protestantism and Catholicism - original sin, universal damnation, atonement, and subligation - was not, and Europeans were perplexed, offended, and incensed that Native peoples had the temerity to take their goods and return their gods.

The truth about stories is that that's all we are.

Stories are wondrous things. And they are dangerous."

History is the stories we tell about the past.

Where do you begin telling someone their world is not the only one? —Lee Maracle, Ravensong

High culture is paranoid about sentiment, but human beings are intensely sentimental. And if art doesn't speak language that's acceptable to people, it relegates itself to obscurity.

There is in fact no Greek equivalent to our barren term 'sex.' This English word in its present usage emerged only in the nineteenth century, out of clinical discourse. Greeks spoke of what we now call 'sex' by referring to gods - Eros and Aphrodite.

Optimism has always been an undeclared policy of human culture—one that grew out of our animal instincts to survive and reproduce—rather than an articulated body of thought.

at any given time there are more cannibals than philosophical pessimists.

The world dotes on its lunatics, whether saintly or sadistic, and commemorates their careers. Psychopaths make terrific material for news agencies and movie studios; their exploits always draw a crowd. But the moment a discouraging word is spoken, some depressing knowledge, that crowd either disperses or goes on the attack. It is depression not madness that cows us, demoralization not insanity that we dread, disillusionment of the mind not its derangement that imperils our culture of hope.

many societies, of course, ours was founded on fearful superstition, and this is always reason enough for any kind of behavior. She

Optimism has always been an undeclared policy of human culture- one that grew out of our animal instincts to survive and reproduce- rather than an articulated body of thought. It is the default condition of our blood and cannot be effectively questioned by our minds or put in grave doubt by our pains. This would explain why at any given time there are more cannibals than philosophical pessimists.

The flush toilet, more than any single invention, has 'civilized' us in a way that religion and law could never accomplish.

The commercial success of some of these low-carb diet books hawking supplements exposes one truism in our culture: We love to hear good things about our bad habits.

The fascination of Germany in this century is the fascination of the abomination. You go there to catch a whiff of the smoke that still hangs in the air.

Anti-intellectualism is itself a means of short-circuiting democracy, because a stable democracy in any culture relies on the public actually understanding the implications of its own choices.

The growth of this kind of stubborn ignorance in the midst of the Information Age cannot be explained away as merely the result of rank ignorance. Many of the people who campaign against established knowledge are otherwise adept and successful in their daily lives. In some ways, it is all worse than ignorance: it is unfounded arrogance, the outrage of an increasingly narcissistic culture that cannot endure even the slightest hint of inequality of any kind.