Quotes About Culture

God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning.

I identify it (i.e., Kadesh Barnea) with Mecca.

La science sociale di XIXe siecle nous a legue un terrible heritage, l'idee que els processus se divisent en trois champs separes: le politique, l'economique et le socioculturel.

Seharusnya Islam adalah sebuah agama bagi seluruh dunia, terlepas dari ras, bahasa maupun kebudayaan. Tidak masuk akal bahwa Tuhan mengharapkan semua orang di seluruh dunia untuk belajar membaca tulisan Arab, bukan?

Yang disebut sekolah-sekolah Islam di Inggris menyedot habis energi murid-muridnya dengan memaksa mereka membaca dan mengingat-ngingat ayat Al-Qur'an dalam bahasa Arab, yang maknanya tidak dimengerti oleh para murid maupun guru. Jika memang ada diskusi mengenai Islam, sang Imam (yang terkadang bahkan tidak bisa bahasa Inggris) bebas mendefinisikan Islam sesuai kehendaknya, dan siapa yang bisa membantah?

Cross-cultural marriage is difficult, especially when one person has to live in another country. But I thought there was a very good chance of it working because people grow together if they have a common passion.

TRADITIONS REASSURE US THAT WE BELONG TOGETHER

The way a culture treats women in birth is a good indicator of how well women and their contributions to society are valued and honored.

11 The uguisu or warbler, sometimes called the nightingale of Japan.

Ideographically the Chinese represent wife by a woman holding a broom—certainly not to brandish it offensively or defensively against her conjugal ally, neither for witchcraft, but for the more harmless uses for which the besom was first invented—the idea involved being thus not less homely than the etymological derivation of the English wife (weaver) and daughter (duhitar, milkmaid).

What Buddhism failed to give, Shintoism offered in abundance.

Virtue and absolute power may strike the Anglo-Saxon mind as terms which it is impossible to harmonize.

Indeed, the sense of shame seems to me to be the earliest indication of the moral consciousness of our race.

It is true that thrift was enjoined by Bushido, but not for economical reasons so much as for the exercise of abstinence

Read Hearn, the most eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido.

Confucius himself has repeatedly taught that external appurtenances are as little a part of propriety as sounds are of music.

Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.

I grew up in a Hindu household but went to a Roman Catholic school. I grew up with a mother who said, 'I'll arrange a marriage for you at 18 ' but she also said that we could achieve anything we put our minds to an encourage us to dream of becoming prime minister or president.

No, no, don't touch your mother just before the baby is born. Now it will be a girl child, because you are one. Run along now. Take your evil eye with you." "Ghias, we must be careful not to teach the girls too much. How will they ever find husbands if they are too learned? The less they know, the less they will want of the outside world.

This great Mughal Emperor [Akbar] was illiterate; he could neither read nor write. However, that had not stopped Akbar from cultivating the acquaintance of the most learned and cultured poets, authors, musicians, and architects of the time - relying solely on his remarkable memory during conversations with them.

Given my swimmingly fetching cultural milieu, getting used to this bleeding business took quite a while. In the meantime, I fervently asked people why the hell this happened to us girls. Various sources consistently informed me that it was (big sigh) "just part of being a woman" (big sigh), or the good ol' standby curse we inherited from Eve.

when you educate yourself about clitoredectomies, infibulation, forced prostitution, rape as a war tactic, patriarchal religions, women painters, filmmakers, poets, writers, activists, politicians, sex-industry workers, historians, archelogoists and musicians, that's self-protection.

Do not, under any circumstances, put this book down and turn on the teevee. The teevee debilitates our culture.

But people are not butterflies, right. People are, well, more important than butterflies. We have opposable thumbs, hello. You can't possibly compare the sanctity of a human's life with that of a butterfly. In our culture you can and, indeed, must quantify sanctity, and butterflies have less than people.