Quotes About Culture

Judaism, the one and only directly and divinely revealed religion in the world

Even if it were within her legal right and authority, it would harm more than help. It might be argued that it is like capital punishment today: the state has the right to use it if necessary, but since it is no longer necessary, it would do more public harm than good in the current war against the culture of death.

It is often said that we live in a youth culture. It's a lie. We live in an old culture. We idolize youth because we are old. We are tired and bored. Ancient cultures respected the old because those cultures were young. They were not bored.

According to God's book, there is "a time to weep and a time to laugh" (Ecclesiastes 3:4). The surest sign that our culture is in deep doo-doo is that we are increasingly sure that this is a time to weep and increasingly doubtful that it is a time to laugh.

Literature in the West arose from liturgy.

Rock star do not jump! The launch was cutting sharply, its skipper calling out a phrase that bore no relationship to the English language as Amy knew it. Rock star in a hurry! Nellie replied, one foot on the boat's gunwale.

What is that instrument?" Aly asked the head guard. When he returned a blank stare, she pantomimed playing the instrument. "A zither?" "Santur," he said.

But it does imply that the search for scapegoats—a particularly alluring pastime in individualistic cultures such as ours in the United States—is a blind alley.

Though a few older men cut fingers in time of grief, it is usually the smallest girls who are selected for this ceremony, and a woman in the valley whose left hand is not a stump is very rare.

the Land of Dolpo, all but unknown to Westerners even today, was said to be the last enclave of pure Tibetan culture left on earth, and Tibetan culture was the last citadel of "all that present-day humanity is longing for, either because it has been lost or

not yet been realized or because it is in danger of disappearing from human sight: the stability of a tradition, which has its roots not only in a historical or cultural past, but within the innermost being of man. . . ."2

The wants of the primitive are few, since he does not envy what he knows nothing of.

Dar, bineînÈ›eles, spusese el, se È™tie c? englezii îÈ™i omoar? mieii de dou? ori: o dat? când îi taie È™i a doua oar? când îi g?tesc.

Half-familiar sounds could be dimly recognized as words through the swirls and eddies of Provençal: demain became demang, vin became vang, maison became mesong.

The day when a Frenchman switches from the formality of vous to the familiarity of tu is a day to be taken seriously. It is an unmistakable signal that he has decided—after weeks or months or sometimes years—that he likes you.

One can see [...] that the so-called governing powers are cardboard characters that mask the true ruling factors of our culture. Of course, those who manipulate the nation are not stupid. Rulers throughout history are only as powerful as the people who support them allow them to be.

To fight gentrification is to fight American thinking.

Gentrification brings money, new people, and renovated real estate to cities, but it also kills them. It takes away the affordability and diversity that are required for unique and challenging culture. It sanitizes. And because it is obvious to most that this is happening (even hypergentrifiers in New York and New Orleans mourn the loss of culture in those cities), no one wants to be seen as a gentrifier. Who would want to be held accountable for helping kill a city?

As Steve has said to me on more than one occasion: "The Chinese are the most rational people in the world. Until they aren't.

The characteristics of the region as an art center — geographically remote, overly conscious of regional identity, and desiring not to be another commonsense Midwest or an appendage of New York or California culture — predisposed local artists to domination by the first individual personalities to manifest both independence and exoticism.

Easygoing, nonmilitant Pop, as at home in Southern California as was Impressionism on the banks of the Seine.

In such paces — the Vancouvers, San Diegos, Portlands, Seattles, and, yes, San Franciscos and Los Angeleses — can we hope for anything more than jazzed-up melding of New York styles or self-conscious lampoons that aspire to kift the curse of provincialism?

All she knew was what she read in the papers, where it seemed that people no longer lived their lives, but had life-styles instead.

The materialistic consciousness of our culture … is the root cause of the global crisis; it is not our business ethics, our politics or even our personal lifestyles. These are symptoms of a deeper underlying problem. Our whole civilization is unsustainable. And the reason that it is unsustainable is that our value system, the consciousness with which we approach the world, is an unsustainable mode of consciousness.