Quotes About Culture

The DNC was right: an amazingly large segment of the population disliked and mistrusted Richard Nixon instinctively. What they did not acknowledge was that an amazingly large segment of the population also trusted him as their savior. "Nixonland" is what happens when these two groups try to occupy a country together. By the end of the 1960s, Nixonland came to encompass the entire political culture of the United States.

The challenge before us as God's people is to refuse to allow our thinking to be muddied by the spirit of this age.

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships.

Travel is rich with learning opportunities, and the ultimate sourvenir is a broader perspective.

Ideally, travel broadens our perspectives personally, culturally, and politically. Suddenly, the palette with which we paint the story of our lives has more colors.

As a traveler, I've often found that the more a culture differs from my own, the more I am struck by its essential humanity.

Globetrotting destroys ethnocentricity, helping us understand and appreciate other cultures. Rather than fear the diversity on this planet, celebrate it. Among your most prized souvenirs will be the strands of different cultures you choose to knit into your own character. The world is a cultural yarn shop, and Back Door travelers are weaving the ultimate tapestry.

In Denmark, "social trust"—a general feeling that you trust your fellow citizens and the pillar institutions of government, law courts, police, hospitals, and so on—is generally found to be the highest in the world. A perfect example of Danish "social trust" is the image of babies sleeping in carriages outside a restaurant while the parents eat inside. You might say, "But no one is watching!" A Dane will say, "Everyone is watching.

Leidsedwarsstraat in Amsterdam

I remember when the standard farewell when I set off on another trip was "Bon voyage!" But today, Americans tend to say, "Have a safe trip." (When I hear this, I'm inclined to say, "Well, you have a safe stay-at-home—because where I'm going is statistically much safer than where you're staying.")

To me, understanding people and their lives is what travel is about, no matter where you go.

History shows that when the church accommodates culture, it weakens it.

Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone's lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don't have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.

PC culture isn't killing comedy, it's driving it. As it always did.

If the Indian people want stories written about themselves, how they want them told, they are going to have to make them, they're going to have to finance them. If you let Hollywood do it, Hollywood is going to get it wrong most of the time.

I think movies are getting dumber, actually. Where it used to be 50/50, now it`s 3% good, 97% stupid.

Funerals in México are also about drowning sorrow with liquor. The coffee is spiked with tequila

Luckless is that country in which the symbols of procreation are held in horror!' he wrote, 'while the agents of destruction are revered!

America: It's like Britain, only with buttons.

Books are good.

He would forever be suspended between two lands, never whole.

In African American culture, class bias is the handmaiden of intraracial prejudice that privileges the near-white or light-complexioned person over the darker-hued.

Education is not just about acquiring knowledge and skills but about being initiated into a certain sensibility.

Even if we are all products of the cultural blender, each mixture of influences, vocabularies, memories, orientations, and temperament possesses a distinct and unmistakable flavor. We make ourselves out of the models we encounter; we give ourselves a form through the different ways we inhabit other forms. And we bring these differences to the event of reading, even as we are reoriented— sometimes subtly, sometimes significantly— by the sum of what we read.