Quotes About Culture

We southerners worship our ancestors.

But that was New Orleans for you. The old didn't die here. They were just forgotten.

Public life for Georgian gentlemen invariably assumed the taking of office, but there was no formal place for their wives in the machinery of local government. However, this rough division between private and public could be applied to almost any century or any culture–a fact which robs the distinction of its analytical purchase. 19

It is not often realized that even the word 'Mandarin', standing as it does for a central concept in Chinese culture, is derived from a Sanskrit word, Mantr?, which went from India to China via Malaya.

Kita akan sanggup mengubah suatu kebudayaan dengan cara memberikan para perempuan anak bangsa alat yang tepat untuk tumbuh terdidik agar mereka dapat menolong diri sendiri. (Amartya Sen)

Ancient India cannot be fitted into the narrow box where the Hindutva activists want to incarcerate it.

Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: [from academe] A modern school where football is taught.

Mammals: a family of vertebrate animals whose females in a state of nature suckle their young, but when civilized and enlightened put them out to nurse, or use the bottle.

Good laws have their origins in bad morals.

A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass.

What the people believe is true. Anishinabe

I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages.

You could read a dozen large tomes on the history of Islam from its very beginnings and you still wouldn't understand what is going on in Algeria. But read 30 pages on colonialism and decolonisation and then you'll understand quite a lot.

Why should we take the diversity of human cultures less seriously than the diversity of animal or plant species? Ought not our just desire to preserve our environment extend to the human environment itself? Our world would be a dreary place, both from the natural and from the cultural point of view, if the only surviving species were those we consider "useful," together with a few we judge to be decorative or that have acquired symbolic value.

Chacune de mes appartenances me relie à un grand nombre de personnes; cependant, plus les appartenances que je prends en compte sont nombreuses, plus mon identité s'avère spécifique.

Umutsuzlukta hakli cikacagimiza, umutta yanilalim. DoÄŸu'dan Uzakta

Ä°nançlar?n?n tehdit alt?nda olduÄŸunu hisseden insanlar aras?nda, bütün kimliklerini özetler gibi görünen ÅŸey dinsel aidiyet oluyor. Ama tehdit alt?nda olan anadilleri ve etnik gruplar?ysa, o zaman dindaÅŸlar?yla k?yas?ya sava??yorlar.

I came from here, you came from there. And now we're both sitting at the same table.

Le rêve secret de la plupart des migrants, c'est qu'on les prenne pour des enfants du pays.

C'est que l'Occident ne veut pas qu'on lui ressemble, il veut seulement qu'on lui obéisse.

Si nos contemporains ne sont pas encouragés à assumer leur appartenances multiples, s'ils ne peuvent concilier leur besoin d'identité avec une ouverture franche et décomplexée aux cultures différentes, s'ils se sentent contraints de choisir entre la négation de soi-même et la négation de l'autre, nous serons entrain de former des légions de fous sanguinaires, des légions d'égarés.

On exagère trop souvent sur l'influence des religions sur les peuples, tandis qu'on néglige à l'inverse l'influence des peuples sur les religions.

Kendime kendim kadar yak?n hissettiÄŸim oysa sadece kitaplardan ve hayallerden bildiÄŸim bu topraklar? tan?may? öyle arzuluyordum ki!

Ce serait même désolant pour un peuple, quel qu'il soit, que de vénérer son histoire plus que son avenir.