Quotes About Culture

Of course these gifts were reckless extravagances for a family that was never more than a couple of dollars and a few days away from hunger, but that's how poor people cope with being marooned in poverty while all around them flows the frothy stream of the consumer culture.

Most people I know are not hard-core religious people. They are what I would call 'lightly religious.' So I don't buy the notion that we can't laugh about religion in America.

In some parts of North-east England, a man would rather kill himself overtaking on a blind bend at seventy miles an hour than drive a hundred yards behind a woman.

Tips for Southern Visitors, No. 5 People will be quite kind to you when they realise you are from the South, because you can't help it.

He had his very own "little white girl" without taking the hit of her actually being white.

A country like America has twice as much food on its shop shelves and in its restaurants than is actually required to feed the American people.

A young Tibetan child touches his head to the floor before the altar and recites a prayer, and I am led to a moment of contentment. This too is part of our struggle as Tibetans: to remind our children and ourselves that we are Tibetan.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

American officials have bent over backwards to show how sensitive they are to Muslim culture. It didn't seem very effective. They seem to be worried about winning the respect of other people.

Magazine journalism is worth remembering. They're mostly gone now, but for a long time magazines played a significant role in the life of the country. If you wanted to understand what the rest of the world was like, you read magazines.

In half a lifetime, many Americans have seen their God dethroned, their heroes defiled, their culture polluted, their values assaulted, their country invaded, and themselves demonized as extremists and bigots for holding on to beliefs Americans have held for generations.

We may deny the existence of ethnonationalism, detest it, condemn it. But this creator and destroyer of empires and nations is a force infinitely more powerful than globalism, for it engages the heart. Men will die for it. Religion, race, culture and tribe are the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse.

The revolution is about relationships. Whether it is betrayal by seduction, terror, power, intimacy, or spirit, exploitation is simply no longer acceptable. We've surveyed centuries of damage, and we know better. We need to move toward a culture of mutuality and respect. We can build our relationships on the basis of our competencies, needs, and care. Men and women need to share power and privilege. All of us must commit to the nurturing of children.

An organization has to institutionalize its culture without bureaucratizing it.

it is far more natural, and common, for leaders to avoid holding people accountable.

fundamental values are not chosen from thin air based on the desires of executives; they are discovered within what already exists in an organization.

An organization has integrity—is healthy—when it is whole, consistent, and complete, that is, when its management, operations, strategy, and culture fit together and make sense.

a leader's first priority is to create an environment where others can do these things and that cannot happen if they are not having effective meetings.

last frontier of competitive advantage will be the transformation of unhealthy organizations into healthy ones

The healthier an organization is, the more of its intelligence it is able to tap into and use.

The most unhappy people in a company are the ones who don't fit the culture and are allowed to stay. They know they don't belong. Deep down inside they don't want to be there. They're miserable.

morale at the company was undeniably higher, and turnover had dropped markedly. But Jeff was adamant that it shouldn't go away completely: "If no one is leaving or being asked to leave, then we're probably not truly living these values.

And we have to stop focusing on agendas and minutes and rules, and accept the fact that bad meetings start with the attitudes and approaches of the people who lead and take part in them.

What is the real problem? Actually, there are two. First, meetings are boring. They are tedious, unengaging, and dry. Even if people had nothing else to do with their time, the monotony of sitting through an uninspired staff meeting, conference call, or two-day off-site would have to rank right up there with the most painful activities of modern business culture.