Quotes About Culture

Names are the turning point of who shall be master. - There is so much virtue in names that a nation which produces its own names, haughtily adheres to them, and subordinates others to them, leads all the rest of the nations of the earth. - I also promulge that a nation which has not its own names, but begs them of other nations, has no identity, marches not in front but behind.

Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall.

America's civilization perturbs the trajectories of all other civilizations just by existing.

What has been forgotten.... is never something purely individual.

A real translation is transparent.

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted. A historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from it as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.

What figure does the man of letters cut in a country where his employer is the proletariat ?

Das Kunstwerk ist grundsätzlich immer reproduzierbar gewesen. Was Menschen gemacht hatten, das konnte immer von Menschen nachgemacht werden.

Der gesamte Bereich der Echtheit entzieht sich der technischen – und natürlich nicht nur der technischen – Reproduzierbarkeit.

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

Duhamel calls the movie "a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someday becoming a 'star' in Los Angeles.

No início do século XX, a reprodução técnica tinha atingido um nível tal que começara a tornar objeto seu, não só a totalidade das obras de arte provenientes de épocas anteriores, e a submeter os seus efeitos às modificações mais profundas, como também a conquistar o seu próprio lugar entre os procedimentos artísticos.

the images of my metropolitan childhood perhaps are capable, at their core, of preforming later historical experience' .

Paris est la grande salle de lecture d'une bibliothèque que traverse la Seine.

the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment.

American colleges and universities are propaganda machines

Obviously, Western Christian Europeans had the right to build their own image of the world, like anybody else who had done so before them. But it was an aberration to pretend and act accordingly as if their specific image of the world and their own sense of totality was the same for any- and everybody else on the planet.

The lure of seeing new places, different ways of life, has been almost irresistible.

The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste," he said. "I don't mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas and they don't bring much culture into their product.

The culture at Atari was a natural outgrowth of [Nolan] Bushnell's personality. But it was not simply self-indulgent. It was based on a philosophy that drew from the hippie movement and would help define Silicon Valley. At it's core were certain principles: authority should be questioned, hierarchies should be circumvented, nonconformity should be admired and creativity should be nurtured.

My head had been shaved, I was wearing Indian cotton robes, and my skin had turned a deep, chocolate brown-red from the sun," he recalled. "So I'm sitting there and my parents walked past me about five times and finally my mother came up and said 'Steve?' and I said 'Hi!

The republic was not, however, democratic or egalitarian. In fact, it was barely a republic. Exercising power from behind its façade was the Medici family, the phenomenally wealthy bankers who dominated Florentine politics and culture during the fifteenth century without holding office or hereditary title. (In the following century they became hereditary dukes, and lesser family members became popes.)

Likewise, what emphasis should be put on great individuals versus on cultural currents has long been a matter of dispute;

Henry Luce to his Time magazine writers: Tell the history of our time through the people who make it.