Quotes About Culture

I grew up in traditional black patriarchal culture and there is no doubt that I'm going to take a great many unconscious, but present, patriarchal complicities to the grave because it so deeply ensconced in how I look at the world. Therefore, very much like alcoholism, drug addiction, or racism patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.

White supremacist ideology is based first and foremost on the degradation of black bodies in order to control them. One of the best ways to instill fear in people is to terrorize them. Yet this fear is best sustained by convincing them that their bodies are ugly, their intellect is inherently underdeveloped, their culture is less civilized, and their future warrants less concern than that of other peoples.

Woman's virtue is man's greatest invention.

Toda sociedad es un sistema de interpretación del mundo (...) Su propia identidad no es otra cosa que ese "sistema de interpretación", ese mundo que ella crea. Y esa es la razón por la cual la sociedad percibe como un peligro mortal todo ataque contra ese sistema de interpretación; lo persigue como un ataque contra su identidad, contra sí misma

[Of Petronius:] Nero… looked up to him as a decisive authority in matters of taste.

Per secoli gli italiani non sono riusciti ad avere nemmeno una memoria comune. Una storia così frammentata non gli ha permesso di elaborare una forma politica all'altezza della cultura, della civiltà, delle straordinarie personalità che sono riusciti a esprimere.

La città non è una giungla d'asfalto, come è stato detto; è uno zoo umano».

way back in 1927, Willem had written in his doctoral thesis, done in Germany, that a terrible evil was taking root in that land. Right at the university, he said, seeds were being planted of a contempt for human life such as the world had

L'originalità assoluta non esiste; l'originalità relativa è l'unica alla quale possiamo aspirare. Ma all'interno di questa possibilità relativa c'è la nozione esatta di originalità, ovvero, ciò che conta è che la somma di tutte quelle influenze, quella specie di brodo culturale e vitale dal quale proviene uno scrittore, si traduce in una nuova apertura, in una nuova possibilità, in una nuova visione.

A Woman is a foreign land,Of which, though there he settle young,A man will ne'er quite understandThe customs, politics, and tongue.

By 1800 BC, the ancient Babylonians had divided the day into hours, the hour into sixty minutes, and the minute into sixty seconds.

I am from a non-animist culture, nothing fancy, GDP worshippers and irrigation agrarians praying to foreign countries foe trade deals

We're Irish, Jake, which means heredity carries us halfway to madness smack out of the womb.

While we like to think that our theology shapes our understanding of the world, our understanding of the world often shapes our theology. The central metaphors of an era will often shift our notions of God.

There is no Thanksgiving back in the old country where I come from. You know why? Because being thankful is a sin.

For example, in Paris, if one desires to buy something, you enter the store and say "Good morning, sir" or "madam," depending on what is appropriate, you wait until you are greeted, you make polite chitchat about the weather or some such, and when the salesperson asks what they can do for you, then and only then do you bring up the vulgar business of the transaction you require.

Much of television has been homogenized in the desire to avoid annoying or upsetting people.

My mother was tickled and I think kind of proud when my father got hit on my an attractive middle-aged Asian lady who hadn't noticed he was with his family. He was certainly pleased about it.

Hey dawg, wassup?" he said, in the strange way that white talent agents from Los Angeles do in an attempt to sound like young black men from underprivileged backgrounds. A linguistic fashion as peculiar as the lisp that everybody in medieval Spain had to adopt after the king developed a speech impediment.

It was a raucous affair—the two cultures meshing together on the dance floor in a riot of yarmulkes and kilts. A fine time was had by all, but a word of caution for anyone thinking of making a similar match: the Jewish tradition of dancing the hora with the bride and groom hoisted high on chairs is liable to clash, spectacularly, with the Scottish tradition of wearing kilts with no underwear, so be prepared for fainting relatives.

Nuestra cultura nos ha condicionado para que creamos que aquellas cosas que no tenemos son las que nos harán felices… sin detenernos a pensar en que todas esas cosas hace cinco años ni siquiera existían.

Spoken of' community (more exactly: a community speaking of itself) is a contradiction in terms.

They have a saying, the Basque. That just because the cat has kittens in the oven, it doesn't make them biscuits.

In my culture, animals are celebrated as beautiful, mysterious, powerful, dangerous, and benevolent. There was a period, before we lost the ability to listen, when the animals took pity on us, protected and taught us to the point where they became human in times of need. (Henry Standing Bear)