Quotes About Culture

One thing I learned on my sporadic spiritual journey was that mainstream culture's disdain and disrespect for the intellectual integrity of Christianity is unwarranted, and its conceited assumption that Christian beliefs are a product of blind faith, bereft of reason and intellect, is completely false.

I think what we need is seriously engaged art, that can teach again that we're smart. And that there's stuff that TV and movies—although they're great at certain things—cannot give us.

The Ptolemaic map defines people according to their food. The Elephantophagi, the Struthiophagi, the Ichthyophagi, and Anthropophagi. If we followed the same sort of classification our definition would be the drink, thus:—the tribe of stout-guzzlers, the roaring potheen-fuddlers, the whisky-fishoid-drinkers, the vin-ordinaire bibbers, the lager-beer-swillers, and an outlying tribe of the

I have avoided giving offence to intelligent Arabs, who have pressed me, asking if I believed in Mohamad by saying, "No I do not: I am a child of Jesus bin Miriam," avoiding anything offensive in my tone, and often adding that Mohamad found their forefathers bowing down to trees and stones, and did good to them by forbidding idolatry, and teaching the worship of the only One God. This, they all know, and it pleases them to have it recognised.

Cold-blooded murders are frightfully common here. Some kill people in order to be allowed to wear the red tail feathers of a parrot in their hair, and yet they are not ugly like the West Coast Negroes, for many men have as finely formed heads as could be found in London. We English, if naked, would make but poor figures beside the strapping forms and finely shaped limbs of Manyuema men and women.

No objection would be made to teaching the natives of the country to read their own languages in the Roman character. No Arab has ever attempted to teach them the Arabic-Koran, they are called guma, hard, or difficult as to religion. This is not wonderful, since the Koran is never translated, and a very extraordinary desire for knowledge would be required to sustain a man in committing to memory pages and chapters of, to him, unmeaning gibberish.

11th March, 1871.—I had a long, fierce oration from Amur, in which I was told again and again that I should be killed and eaten—the people wanted a "white one" to eat! I needed 200 guns; and "must not go to die." I told him that I was thankful for advice, if given by one who had knowledge, but his vehement threats were dreams of one who had never gone anywhere, but sent his slaves to kill people. He was only frightening my people, and doing me an injury.

To dictate definition is to wield cultural power

The trade is chiefly with Madagascar: the houses are richly furnished with furniture, dishes from India, &c. At Garaganza there are hundreds of Arab traders, there too all fruits abound, and the climate is healthy, from its elevation. Why cannot we missionaries imitate these Arabs in living on heights?

Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn't have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria.

Before long, public libraries had stopped lending books, gauze face masks had become regular attire, and people had stopped shaking hands.

Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving in different ways.

God made me an Indian.

Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others.

In places in the world where we don't speak the same language, or even understand that we pray to the same God, we dance to the same beat, that is the ONE.

WHAT WE NEED IN AMERICA TODAY IS A VIGOROUS RETURN TO THE GOD OF OUR FATHERS AND A MOST VIGOROUS DEFENSE AGAINST THE MINION OF GODLESSNESS AND ATHEISM.

I have been asked this question over and over again: 'Dr. Jeremiah, do you think God is finished with America?' But that is the wrong question. The right question is: 'Is America finished with God?'

Anytime someone says your God is ugly and you release your God and join their God, there is no hope for your freedom until you once more believe in your own concept of the 'deity.'

Thank God we in Iran have neither the desire nor the need to suffer from democracy.

God has graced every tradition with insight into the divine mystery, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated-each has a gift to bring to the world.

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.

The crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God.

God made me an Indian, but not a reservation Indian.

Let God be some tribal female who is known but forbidden.