Quotes About Culture

The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love books, but do not live by books.

Are you New World or Old?' 'Sounds like a novel by Henry James.' 'Never read him.' 'Don't. But that was his question and he plumped for the Old.

Nobody told me he was an American. Not American—Canadian. Well, what's the difference? They're touchier, that's what.

He came of a generation to which any girl, before she is married, is a kind of unexploded bomb.

Showing Christ as African, Asian, or Central American underlines the universality of his humanity. The depiction of the Holy Spirit as a hummingbird rather than a dove on the Mexican cruz de ánimas (Fig. 9.2) is a modest but striking instance of using meaningful visual language for a particular culture.

Grace rose from her chair and Elizabeth too came to her feet. "I thought your arse would be sore by now," said Grace. "It is a bit." "You have to be careful when you ask the Irish to tell you a story.

an organization that has a culture where everyone's afraid to speak candidly is a place where people live amid delusion and fantasy

colaborar para forjar una cultura en la que los estímulos y no la crítica, el liderazgo y no el victimismo, las ideas y no los chismes, y el amor y no el odio, ganen la partida.

Our culture tells us to pursue titles and trinkets, applause and acclaim, money and mansions. All that's fine—it truly is—so long as you don't get brainwashed into defining your worth as a human being by these things. Enjoy them, just don't get attached to them. Have them, just don't base your identity around them. Appreciate them, just don't need them.

Viajó de aldea en aldea, a veces a pie, otras en tren, aprendiendo nuevas costumbres, contemplando paisajes eternos y amando cada vez más aquel pueblo que irradiaba calidez, bondad y una perspectiva refrescante sobre el verdadero significado de la vida.

An excellent organization is really just a cluster of people showing personal excellence in all they do.

Your thoughts are shaped by the people you associate with, by the books you read, by the words you speak and by your daily physical surroundings.

Hemos fomentado una cultura de gente apática, débil, y delicada que es incapaz de cumplir promesas, que huye del compromiso y que renuncia a sus aspiraciones cuando surge el menor de los obstáculos.

hacking in its pure form stretched back centuries. It wasn't restricted to a single medium. It was more than a methodology. It was an ethos.

the collective wisdom of humanity [is] enshrined in its poetry.

We're developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think.

So much, then, for the "mystery" of how Muslim culture was somehow lost or left behind. The notion that in the medieval era Islamic culture was advanced well beyond Europe is as much an illusion as recent ones about an "Arab Spring." The Islamic world was backward then, and so it remains.

More recently, faculty at the University of Texas condemned "Western Civilization" courses as inherently right wing, and Yale even returned a $20 million contribution rather than reinstate the course.

Encouraged by the Scholastics and embodied in the great medieval universities founded by the church, faith in the power of reason infused Western culture, stimulating the pursuit of science and the evolution of democratic theory and practice.

the Romans knew of the watermill but made nearly no use of it, continuing to rely on muscle power to grind their flour.20 The Ottoman Empire prohibited the mechanical clock, and so did the Chinese.

Humans will tend to adopt and retain those elements of culture that appear to produce "better" results, while those that appear to be less rewarding will tend to be discarded.

As one of China's leading economists put it, "in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don't have any doubt about this."42 Neither do I.

The reason so many innovations and inventions were abandoned or even outlawed in China had to do with Confucian opposition to change on grounds that the past was greatly superior.

For there is another truth: to the extent that other cultures have failed to adopt at least major aspects of Western ways, they remain backward and impoverished.