Quotes About Culture

The Trump White House stood less for government and the push-pull of competing interests and developing policies, and more, in a brand-savvy world, as a fixed and unpopular cultural symbol.

Kushner had his personal press operation and Bannon had his. The leaking culture had become so open and overt—most of the time everybody could identify everybody else's leaks—that it was now formally staffed.

He was postliterate—total television.

Alas, politics itself has more and more become a discrete business. Its appeal is B-to-B—business-to-business. The real swamp is the swamp of insular, inbred, incestuous interests. This isn't corruption so much as overspecialization. It's a wonk's life. Politics has gone one way, the culture another. The left-right junkies might pretend otherwise, but the great middle doesn't put political concerns at the top of their minds.

China is where Nazi Germany was in 1929 to 1930. The Chinese, like the Germans, are the most rational people in the world, until they're not. And they're gonna flip like Germany in the thirties. You're going to have a hypernationalist state, and once that happens you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

New York, the world's largest Jewish city.

The leaking culture had become so open and overt—most of the time everybody could identify everybody else's leaks—that it was now formally staffed.

Meanwhile, new ideas crept like a damp stain into the very fabric of Tang culture, casting a shadow across the world of the old aristocratic clans that had survived.

The great thing about university is that they incline you to get up and do it, from the Classics to modern plays, to the humor that Monty Pythons made popular.

The first word Palestinian schoolchildren learn in their reading primers is jihad.

L'ARBRE GEANT FREMISSAIT sous les coups de hache. A coté du colosse végétal, les hommes à la peau sombre, luisante de sueur, ressemblaient à des miniatures mouvantes. [...] La grande forêt pris le deuil. Les bruits les plus fantastiques se mirent à courir : on avait tué l'Arbre-Dieu.

Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice...for we have no other criterion of reason than the example and idea of the opinions and customs of the country we live in.

The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure.

Selon Troubetskoï, "nous devons nous habituer à l'idée que le monde romano-germanique, avec toute sa culture, soit notre pire ennemi. Nous devons renverser et piétiner sans pitié les idoles des idéaux sociaux et des préjugés empruntés à l'Occident, qui orientent toujours les idées de nos intellectuels

History indulges strange whims in the way it dresses its women.

What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is only related to objects, and not to individuals, or to life.

Vous vous intéressez aux vins? - Ça me donne une contenance; ça fait français. Et puis il faut s'intéresser à quelque chose, dans la vie, je trouve que ça aide.

J'aurais pu adhérer au Front National, mais à quoi bon manger de la choucroute avec des cons?

Hidden all day in impenetrable black burkas, rich Saudi women transformed themselves by night into birds of paradise with their corsets, their see-through bras, their G-strings with multicolored lace and rhinestones. They were exactly the opposite of Western women, who spent their days dressed up and looking sexy to maintain their social status, then collapsed in exhaustion once they got home, abandoning all hope of seduction in favor of clothes that were loose and shapeless.

Qué es lo que define a un hombre? ¿Cuál es la primera pregunta que se le hace a un hombre cuando quieres informarte de su estado? En algunas sociedades le preguntan primero si está casado, si tiene hijos; en las nuestras, se le pregunta en primer lugar su profesión. Lo que define ante todo al hombre occidental es el puesto que ocupa en el proceso de producción, y no su estatuto de reproductor.

Hidden all day in impenetrable black burkas, rich Saudi women transformed themselves by night into birds of paradise with their corsets, their see-through bras, their G-strings with multicolored lace and rhinestones. They were exactly the opposite of Western women, who spent their days dressed up and looking sexy to

Toynbee's idea that civilizations die not by murder but by suicide.

For the French, an intellectual didn't have to be responsible. That wasn't his job.

Haluja lietsotaan sietämättömyyteen saakka ja sitten tehdään niiden toteuttaminen yhä mahdottomammaksi; se oli ainoa periaate, jolle länsimainen yhteiskunta perustui.