Quotes About Culture

Anthropology is the science which tells us that people are the same the whole world over-except when they are different.

They were just little families cooking beans and planting and hunting a deer now and then, and having babies and laying their old folks to rest, not harming anyone, just living...I know that Indians aren't no dirtier than any white folks and cleaner than some. Not stupid, either. But I saved my breath. The likes of her isn't going to listen nor be changed in the mind just from hearing sense. Some people sense is wasted on and that's purely a fact.

In my head I remember that day the Indian man came and hollered at our camp and hadn't hurt anyone yet and I think that he was trying to say something, but no one will lift their eyes when I speak so I don't say anything.

Takes more than beer in your blood to take the English out of you.

When you think about it, there's a whole novel behind the voice of a Haitian in Montreal, a German in Paris, a Laotian in Chicago...

le bilinguisme est une stimulation intellectuelle de tous les instants.

Je voyage, je me cultive, me transforme ! Mon corps est façonné par une nourriture qui n'est pas la vôtre, mon cerveau s'imprègne de lectures qui ne sont pas les vôtres, je me fabrique, je m'éloigne de vous, et vous n'y pouvez rien. Restez en contact si vous le souhaitez mais sachez que, de toute manière, vous m'avez perdue. Chaque fois que vous me reverrez, je serai méconnaissable. Inconnaissable.

The problem, of course, is that languages are not only languages. They're also worldviews -- and therefore, to some extent, untranslatable ...

Les langues ne sont pas seulement des langues : ce sont aussi des world views, c'est à dire des façons de voir et de comprendre le monde. Il y a de l'intraduisible là-dedans... et si vous avez plus d'une world view... vous n'en avez, d'une certaine façon, aucune.

How does a culture that prizes equality of opportunity explain, or indeed accommodate, its persistently marginalized people?

How does a culture that prizes equality of opportunity explain, or indeed accommodate, its persistently marginalized people? Twenty-first-century Americans need to confront this enduring conundrum. Let us recognize the existence of our underclass.

What's more, the North's unflattering genealogy began in the "bogs and fens" of Ireland and England, where they were spawned from vagabond stock and swamp people.

Parody was one way Americans safely digested their class politics.

People can choose to treasure those parts of their heritage that they see as favorable and wish to keep, jettisoning what unpleasant truths they would prefer to forget.

oral folk culture suggests that poor men openly joked about it. Desertion to them was part of the daily resistance to upper-class rule.

A North Carolina journalist neatly summed up the identity confusion: "If you think you're a redneck, you think you're hardworking, fun-loving, and independent. If you don't think you're a redneck, you think they're loud, obnoxious, bigoted, and shallow.

The Pocahontas story requires the princess to reject her own people and culture. This powerful theme has persisted, as the historian Nancy Shoemaker observes, because it contributes to the larger national rationale of the Indians' willing participation in their own demise.

Anything said in upper-crust British automatically sounded intelligent.

The consequences of an ungrateful spirit are not as readily seen as, say, those of a contagious disease. But they are no less deadly. Western civilization has fallen prey to an epidemic of ingratitude. Like a poisonous vapor, this subtle sin is polluting our lives, our homes, our churches, and our culture.

avenues—television, magazines, movies, music, friends, malls, and catalogs, to name a few. A steady diet of these worldly influences will shape our view of what is valuable, what is beautiful, and what is important in life.

There's a hardening of the culture. Reality TV has lowered the standards of entertainment. You're left wondering about the legitimacy of relationships. It's probably harder to entertain the same people with a more classic form of writing, and romantic comedies are a classic genre.

Always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry' is a aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow.

Madame de Pompadour excelled at an art which the majority of human beings thoroughly despise because it is unprofitable and ephemeral: the art of living.

Many of us in industrialized countries often act as if we have nothing to learn from developing nations, yet many of these traditional cultures do something extraordinarily right in the way they care for new mothers.