Quotes About Culture

Again, Saburo Tominaga once went to the Shirakawa Prefectural Office to cash his brother Morikuni's bonus bond and, unwilling to touch paper currency defiled with a foreign-style design, carried it home between chopsticks.

Perché siamo giunti a una società del genere? Perché viviamo in un'era in cui tutto ciò che era puro è stato contaminato?

Los japoneses a diferencia de los americanos, no sufren conflictos interiores por causa de una severa conciencia puritana, pero sí muestran sus neurosis provocadas por el particular sistema de vida en las ciudades.

A más cultura, peor visión sexual.

Cómo soportar una época que ha manchado todo lo que en otros tiempos era sagrado?

China is the greatest mystifying and stupefying fact in the modern world.

Since the invention of the flush toilet and the vacuum carpet cleaner, the modern man seems to judge a man's moral standards by his cleanliness, and thinks a dog the more highly civilized for having a weekly bath and a winter wrapper round his belly.

As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini.

While in the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them.

All women's dresses, in every age and country, are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.

Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition.

Biology enables, Culture forbids.

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people's collective imagination.

There are no gods, no nations, no money and no human rights, except in our collective imagination.

One potential remedy for human stupidity is a dose of humility. National, religious and cultural tensions are made worse by the grandiose feeling that my nation, my religion and my culture are the most important in the world – hence my interests should come before the interests of anyone else, or of humankind as a whole. How can we make nations, religions and cultures a bit more realistic and modest about their true place in the world?

Our language evolved as a way of gossiping.

People easily understand that 'primitives' cement their social order by believing in ghosts and spirits, and gathering each full moon to dance together around the campfire. What we fail to appreciate is that our modern institutions function on exactly the same basis.

A good rule of thumb is 'Biology enables, culture forbids.' Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It's culture that obliges people to realise some possibilities while forbidding others.

Even more money is transferred to the bank accounts of fashion designers, gym managers, dieticians, cosmeticians and plastic surgeons, who help us arrive at the café looking as similar as possible to the market's ideal of beauty.

The global empire being forged before our eyes is not governed by any particular state or ethnic group. Much like the Late Roman Empire, it is ruled by a multi-ethnic elite, and is held together by a common culture and common interests.

Cultures are mental parasites that emerge accidentally, and thereafter take advantage of all people infected by them.

The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups.

Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.

Successful cultures are those that excel in reproducing their memes, irrespective of the costs and benefits to their human hosts.