Quotes About Culture

The human mind naturally freezes the relentless passage of time by presenting us with static images of people, our culture, and our own self-identity. But if we were truly sensitive to evolution, we would realize these are only passing shadows in a world of ceaseless flux.

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. —Eric Hoffer

Desperate to win the French over to the American cause and understanding their nature quite well, he had transformed himself into what they had wanted to see in him—the American version of the French spirit and way of life. He was appealing to their notorious narcissism.

Cartoons are data. If people find them funny, that tells us something about the world.

Nothing is more important to a nation than its history. It is the earth upon which any society stands.

who had the advantage of seeming to be an American without the disadvantage of actually being one; and Adeyemi

Where was the respect? The boys all looked like girls and the girls all looked like whores. Clearly, the country was already halfway in the shit.

In the United Kingdom – that godless isle of apostasy

The Germans felt themselves superior to the Italians. The Italians thought the Germans vulgar.

At the places where I want to work, even if people do other things well (even extraordinary well) but routinely demean others, they are seen as incompetent.

The best bosses do more than charge up people, and recruit and breed energizers. They eliminate the negative, because even a few bad apples and destructive acts can undermine many good people and constructive acts.

The Law of the Twelve Tables, a Roman legislation circa 450 BC, actually required a father to put to death any deformed child (Cito necatus insignis ad deformitatem puer esto). (Modern moral philosophers, like Joseph Fletcher and Princeton University's Peter Singer, advocate the same thing.)

narratives are major vectors of rapid change in culture, in zeitgeist, and in economic behavior.

When we consider further the social and psychological roots of the collective urge to kill the world, we are likely to see more of ourselves in it and to begin to think of such groups as something of a dark cultural underground of our own society. We are also likely to discover that whatever renders our society more decent and more inclusive in its benefits is likely to undermine the totalistic impulse to destroy everything.

There were questions one asked, and questions one did not. That was strong custom. And friendship.

Perrin suspected Lini was one of those women who saw her "place" as being in charge. Come to think of it, most women did. That was the way of the world, it seemed, not just the Two Rivers.

To the Aiel, it was not a war; it was an execution.

Only a fool takes offense at customs different from her own.

Let any man as wants start carrying a sword, and soon we'd be as bad as everyplace else. I heard what they're like, Mistress, and we don't want that here.

Ladies! A woman is a woman, Rand al'Thor. Unless she is a Wise One," she

A city without choras would seem bleak as wilderness.

Essentials of Physical Anthropology

The bar was also a reminder of an age when the upper middle classes poured enormous quantities of hard liquor down their throats at every occasion in which more than two people were in a room for more than three minutes.

Then, too, it seems certain, in light of future events, simple racism was a factor; Ramanujan, after all, was a black man.