Quotes About Culture

I have an affinity with Algeria, because I grew up with plenty of Algerian friends in the suburbs of Paris.

I was born and raised in the suburbs of Atlanta, which as you can imagine, was not the most diverse place to grow up in as a Korean American.

I grew up in Oakland and for a long time I was the only white kid in school. Then I moved to the suburbs when I was in junior high and it was mostly white.

What gay culture is before it is anything else, before it is a culture of desire or a culture of subversion or a culture of pain, is a culture of friendship.

Sir Hugh Greene is the man I hold most responsible for the state of our country today. For 11 years hardly a week went by without a sniping reference to me. And he gave access to anyone who was prepared to say anything morally subversive.

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.

I don't want to speak for my movies; you could say my movies are just completely silly and dumb, but in the case of 'Idiocracy' and 'Borat,' without a doubt there is a really subversive and sophisticated assault on American culture.

When I was a kid, pre-1994 was still apartheid, so we didn't get a lot the subversive music from the States or from the U.K. A lot of the music we would get was the poppiest pop music, so I've never really had a bad association it.

Subway is a real point of pride. We have influenced the way people eat.

From blood banking to the modern subway, from jazz to social justice, the contributions of African Americans have shaped and molded and influenced our national culture and our national character.

I wish I had taken Spanish instead of French in high school. I could eavesdrop on a lot more conversations on the subway if I knew Spanish.

I lived in Paris for two years with my family. I would roam the streets of Paris during the day for a few hours in the subway, on the streets, and I listened to the French language, and I got a sense of the rhythm and the melody of the language.

I learned that instead of relying on and imitating American music, there is a better chance for an Asian artist to succeed if he or she follows his or her own culture.

I would eventually leave the business in 1999 to work full-time as a writer, but during the previous decade, I would advise French businessmen on how to succeed in Germany; tell Americans what to do in Eastern Europe; show the Spanish how to become more like the Americans. I spent one particularly haunting year advising bankers in Mexico.

Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice I say the darker the flesh then the deeper the roots

Everybody against me. Why? Why me? I have not brought violence to you. I have not brought Thug Life to America. I didn't create Thug Life. I diagnosed it.

Niggers was the ones on the rope, hanging off the thing. Niggas is the ones with gold ropes,hanging out at clubs.

Coffee and tobacco are complete repose.

Reading, conversation, environment, culture, heroes, mentors, nature – all are lottery tickets for creativity. Scratch away at them and you'll find out how big a prize you've won.

El Paso is parasitic off of Juarez rather than vice versa.

Markets are not just about the steam engine, iron foundries, or today's silicon-chip factories. Markets also supported Shakespeare, Haydn, and the modern book superstore. The rise of oil painting, classical music, and print culture were all part of the same broad social and economic developments, namely the rise of capitalism, modern technology, rule of law, and consumer society.

The bottom line is that Germany is still an underappreciated food country. Furthermore, buying bread, cheese, and especially sausage in the supermarket will almost certainly not be disappointing. The best ethnic food in Germany is often from groups that don't make their way in very large numbers to the United States.

In other words, a culture of the casual is a culture of people who already have achieved something and who already can prove it. It is a culture of the static and the settled, the opposite of Tocqueville's restless Americans.

Many individuals do not buy many books or go to many art museums, but the passion for music is widespread and nearly universal.