Quotes About Culture

We seem to be moving as a society from a group of expert readers with uniquely personal, internal platforms of background knowledge to a group of expert readers who are increasingly dependent on similar, external servers of knowledge. I want to understand the consequences and costs of losing these uniquely formed internal sources of knowledge without losing sight of the extraordinary gifts of the abundant information now at our fingertips.

They realize they are intense, complex, and driven, but they have been taught that their strong personalities are perceived as excessive, too different from the norm, and consequently wrong. In a culture that often equates different with wrong, it's inevitable that gifted adults point a critical finger

Just because we talk slow doesn't mean we think slow, others point out. On the East Coast they seem to think there's something funny about riding around in a pickup truck. Well in the Deep South, we don't think it's all that natural to hurdle through the dark in a crowded subway.

The first thing the therapist asked me was, 'Are you here because you're depressed?' I said, 'Not at all--I'm here because I'm Southern.'" Anne Herndon

Agatha Swanburne - "Some things just sound better in French.

The British Mew-eezum!

A lot of people think Japanese food is difficult, a lot of work. But you don't have to buy the knife I have. You don't have to train as long as I have. You can do my cooking in your kitchen.

Something born from human pride and the quest for pleasure cannot be considered true culture.

True culture is born within nature, and is simple, humble, and pure. Lacking true culture, humanity will perish.

Some studies actually showed that that Russian drinkers lived longer than non-drinkers. [Michelle Parsons] suggested an explanation for the apparent vodka paradox: for what it is worth, alcohol may help people adapt to realities that otherwise make them want to curl up and die. Parsons, who called her book "Dying Unneeded", argued that Russians were dying early because they had nothing and no one to live for.

Have you heard," he said "that many of our people believe if you know five colloquial expressions in their tribal language, they must always provide you with nourishment and shelter? But-" He paused as though to make sure she was paying attention. "But if you know fewer than five, they owe you not even a sip of water." She nodded, understanding his point, but he pressed it. "Learn those five phrases, Miss Sweeney," he said.

The educated do not share a common body of information, but a common state of mind

Travelers never think that they are the foreigners.

Amazing that the human race has taken enough time out from thinking about food or sex to create the arts and sciences.

in the city, nudity means something; in the wild, it just exists

But that would be exactly the wrong way to look at him, because it would be an attempt to make him a godlike figure capable of doing what no human being can do: completely transcend his own upbringing. Instead, we should assess him by the standards of his own culture and time. By those standards, he was a role model indeed.

It is instructive to note that different cultures "discovered" completely different constellations in the sky, a fact that is more consistent with the idea that constellations are a whimsical projection of the human mind than a reflection of astronomic reality.

Art has become a necessity of life.

People aren't social, they're tribal. Race doesn't exist, but tribes are fucking real.

Since White America refuses to see its past, they can't really see me either. Add to that a little of Madame C.J.s magic and watch me go invisible. Watch me step outside of history. Assimilation as revolution. That's one thing that most of us know that white folks don't. Race doesn't really exist. Culture? Ethnicity? Sure. Class too. But race is just a bunch of rules meant to keep us on the bottom. Race is a strategy. The rest is just people acting playing roles.

People look at interracial couples through their own, distorting racial lens. It doesn't matter what form they take.

Every misogynist came out of a woman.

No me sorprendió. Por norma, todas las religiones del mundo discriminaban a las mujeres, bien situándolas en un incomprensible segundo plano o bien legitimando que pudieran ser maltratadas y vejadas. Era algo realmente lamentable a lo que nadie parecía querer encontrar una solución.

en Japón se puede fumar en el interior de los locales pero no en la calle).