Quotes About Culture

Nu pricep cum se poate dispre?ui originea unui popor, indiferent dac? e cel care l-a inventat pe Dumnezeu sau cel care a inventat cifrele!

Do you know what the Turkish say about coffee? It should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.

Everything's better when you say it in Latin.

Don't just yell France! There are a lot of other countries.

Language is like songs, like food, like dance-it is the expression of what we think.

The theoretical recognition of the split-space of enunciation may open the way to conceptualising an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture's hybridity. It is the inbetween space that carries the burden of the meaning of culture, and by exploring this Third Space, we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of our selves.

Journalism, look you, is the religion of modern society.

What place indeed is there in the shallow petty frivolous thing called society for noble thoughts and feelings?

Le grand monde a son argot. Mais cet argot s'appelle le style.

La Société ne fait-elle pas de l'homme, suivant les milieux où son action se déploie, autant d'hommes différents qu'il y a de variétés en zoologie ? [...] Il a donc existé, il existera donc de tout temps des Espèces Sociales comme il y a des Espèces Zoologiques.

Si les Français ont autant de répugnance que les Anglais ont de propension pour les voyages, peut-être les Français et les Anglais ont-ils raison de part et d'autre. On trouve partout quelque chose de meilleur que l'Angleterre, tandis qu'il est excessivement difficile de retrouver loin de la France les charmes de la France.

The rout, that dreary review of fashionable fineries, that parade of well-dressed self-infatuations, is one of those English inventions currently mechanifying the other nations. England seems determined to see the entire world bored just as she is, and just as bored as she.

Monsieur," said Madame de Godollo, "we Hungarians, primitive people and almost savages that we are, have a saying that when our door is open both sides of it are opened wide; when we close it it is double-locked and bolted.

Mother and daughter looked at one another as if Pons were speaking Chinese. No one can imagine how ignorant and exclusive Parisians are; they only learn what they are taught, and that only when they choose.

Old Claparon is dead, and his son, who has become a banker, has ordered the cheapest kind of funeral for him. That fellow has no education; they wouldn't behave like that in China.

Circulating libraries were not as yet; if you wished to read a book, you were obliged to buy it, for which reason novels of the early part of the century were sold in numbers which now seem well-nigh fabulous to us.

Indians, of course, have no "theology," and indeed no word for the system of credulity in which the white priests arrange for God, who must be entirely bewildered by it, a series of excuses for his failures.

In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.

I think it would be a good stunt to get along without any art at all for a generation, and see what we miss.

Medical knowledge and technical savvy are biodegradable. The sort of medicine that was practiced in Boston or New York or Atlanta fifty years ago would be as strange to a medical student or intern today as the ceremonial dance of a !Kung San tribe would seem to a rock festival audience in Hackensack.

Doctors, dressed up in one professional costume or another, have been in busy practice since the earliest records of every culture on earth. It is hard to think of a more dependable or enduring occupation, harder still to imagine any future events leading to its extinction.

You can decide to forgo any ethical deliberations and simply embrace the moral beliefs and norms you inherited from your family and culture. But this approach undermines your freedom, for if you accept without question whatever moral beliefs come your way, they are not really yours. Only if you critically examine them for yourself are they truly yours.

Men were only made into "men" with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally "a man" any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.

Ojiisan says if you want to understand a people, look at their language. The words write the history, not the other way around.