Quotes About Culture

It was not by mere coincidence that sex so disturbed us for thousands of years: repressive religious dictates and social taboos grew out of aspects of our nature that cannot now just be wished away.

Just as a childhood can be released from the odour of a washing powder or cup of tea, an entire culture can spring from the angles of a few lines.

love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another country, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.

Office civilisation could not be feasible without the hard take-offs and landings effected by coffee and alcohol.

It may now be deemed 'normal' to wear cut-off shorts, expose bellybuttons, marry someone of either gender and watch a little porn for fun, but it also remains indispensably 'normal' to believe that true love should be monogamous and that one's desire should be focused exclusively on one person. To be in dispute with this founding principle is to risk being dismissed, in public or private, with that most dispiriting, caustic and shameful of all epithets: pervert.

Differences of age or of race may set up postitions of manufactured superiority: the manual worker from Germany flies to Thailand and because of the historical advantage of his economy and exchange rate, feels and behaves like a millionaire. The plodding Englishman arrives in a small North American town and, simply on account of his exotic accent, may be welcomed as charmingly original and sophisticated.

The ultimate goal of the art lover should be to build a world where works of art have become a little less necessary.

And if we were to show up at any college humanities department in urgent search of purpose and meaning, or were to break down in a museum gallery in a quest for forgiveness or charity, we would be swiftly removed and possibly handed over to psychiatric authorities. The intensity of need and the emotional craving that religions once willingly engaged with have not been thought acceptable within the contemporary cultural realm.

Clashes of taste are an inevitable by-product of a world where forces continually fragment and deplete us in new ways.

Lorsque les Blancs sont venus en Afrique, nous avions la terre et ils avaient la Bible. Ils nous ont appris à prier les yeux fermés: lorsque nous les avons ouverts, les Blancs avaient la terre et nous la Bible.

I would have thought, said the prime minister, that Your Majesty was above literature. Above literature? said the Queen. Who is above literature? You might as well say one is above humanity.

I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?

the more institutions and freedoms and benefits one can take for granted – of which in my view free state-supported galleries and museums come high on the list – the more civilised a society is.

For Graham's mother there was little to choose between Jews and Catholics. The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and the Catholics had children in much the same way.

To reduce a library to simple architecture, bricks and mortar is a mistake. Similarly, to suggest a library is defined by the books on the shelf is erroneous.

The names Americans visit on their children never ceases to amaze me. One of Diana Ross' daughters labours under the name of Chudney.

Leggere vuol dire sottrarsi. Rendersi irreperibili. Sarebbe già diverso» disse Sir Kevin «se come passatempo fosse meno… egoistico». «Egoistico?». «Forse dovrei dire solipsistico». «E allora lo dica». Al che Sir Kevin si lanciò. «Se potessimo veicolare le sue letture per uno scopo più ampio: acculturare il paese, ad esempio, per promuovere la lettura fra i giovani.

Hawai'i has often been called a melting pot, but I think of it more as a "mixed plate"—a scoop of rice with gravy, a scoop of macaroni salad, a piece of mahi-mahi, and a side of kimchi. Many different tastes share the plate, but none of them loses its individual flavor, and together they make up a uniquely "local" cuisine. This is also, I believe, what America is at its best—a whole greater than the sum of its parts. I

Before Cook's arrival the native population of Hawai'i was more than a quarter of a million people; a hundred years later, it had plummeted to fewer than sixty thousand.

Hawai'i has often been called a melting pot, but I think of it more as a 'mixed plate'---a scoop of rice with gravy, a scoop of macaroni salad, a piece of mahi-mahi, and a side of kimchi. Many different tastes share the plate, but none of them lose their individual flavor, and together they make up a uniquely 'local' cuisine. This is also, I believe, what America is at its best---a whole greater than the sum of it's parts.

It is not just the history of the Hawaiian islands but the significance of the ordinary people whose lives - many quite extraordinary - make up that history.

population of Hawai'i was more than a quarter of a million people; a hundred years later, it had plummeted to fewer than sixty thousand.

Our culture has more to gain from inner stillness than incessant pushing.

Niima: center of the galaxy, repository of manifold cultures, offering to its myriad inhabitants a never-ending succession of entertainment, education, and enjoyable distractions.