Quotes About Culture

Tay glanced at Evans, whose short hair and well-scrubbed face unmistakably marked him as another American. So far, Tay thought, this had all the makings of an authentically crappy day. First the stupid building, and now all these Americans.

Burials in Cahokia could be astonishingly elaborate. In one, a man was buried on a bed of twenty thousand beads of shell. Nearby three people were buried at teh same time along with eight hundred arrowheads and a host of other objects. These were probably close relatives, sacrifieced at the death of the great man. Also nearby, more than fifty women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three were interred, evidently strangled as part of a funeral ceremony.

You go through more bestsellers than a McCarthy bonfire.

Mariah says, "I have Indian blood in me," and underneath everything I could swear she says it as if she were announcing her possession of a trophy. How do you get to be the sort of victor who can claim to be the vanquished also?

A grim pattern is visible in history: When religion is the ruling force in a society, it produces horror. The stronger the supernatural beliefs, the worse the inhumanity. A culture dominated by intense faith invariably is cruel to people who don't share the faith--and sometimes to many who do.

A nation becomes what its young people read in their youth. Its ideals are fashioned then, its goals strongly determined.

Hiring highly technical testers was only step one. We still needed to get developers involved. One of the key ways we did this was by a program called Test Certified. In retrospect, the program was instrumental in getting the developer-testing culture ingrained at Google.

The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.

It was graffiti tagging for rich people, except they used plaques instead of spray paint.

To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.

In science, just as in art and in life, only that which is true to culture is true to nature.

They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fisherman's octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach.

They eat the dainty food of gamous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fisherman's octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach.

1. Per educare occorre proporre adeguatamente il passato.

Mi ha mostrato ciò vividamente una delle novelle giovanili di Thomas Mann. Il grande genio esprime sì la cultura dominante, ma è impossibile che non faccia trapelare l'inquietudine rimanente in essa, e l'inadempienza ultima di essa. Il titolo di quella novella è Il piccolo signor Friedemann.

The Sinaloans had heard that the Sonorans indulged in the unspeakable atrocity of eating flour tortillas. Flour! Any human being knew that tortillas were made of corn.

He believed he was celebrating them when he shared stories of their foibles. He felt the burden of being their living witness. Somehow the silliest details of their days were, to him, sacred. And he believed that if only the dominant culture could see these small moments, they would see their own human lives reflected in the other.

The whole family had inherited the bizarre belief system of Antonio and América: instant coffee was some kind of miracle.

La palabra 'migración' significaba para los de Tres Camarones la temporada en que el atún y las ballenas pasaban rumbo al norte por la costa, o cuando las guacamayas llegaban del sur. No sabían de otro significado

Gringos! They have copied us again

He, who endlessly combated his family's reliance on 'Mexican time.' They drove him crazy. If a dinner gathering was announced for six o'clock, he could be sure it wouldn't start until nine. They'd walk in as if they were early. Or worse, they'd say 'What?' as if he were the one with a problem. You know you're Mexican when lunch doesn't show up till ten at night.

People daily speak a quilt of words, and continents and nations and tribes and even enemies dance all over your mouth when you speak. The tongue seems to know no race, no affiliation, no breed, no caste, no order, no genus, no lineage.

No way of knowing how language re-created a family. His own children didn't want to learn Spanish, when he had given everything to learn English.

Do gringos kiss?' Big Angel asked. 'Some,' Little Angel said. 'I know guys. Kiss their dads.' 'Everybody kisses moms, though.' 'Kissing moms doesn't count. It's required.' 'Right, right. If you don't kiss your mom, forget it, man.' 'Right? You don't get to heaven if you don't kiss your mom.