Quotes About Culture

Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time.

Surveys of many cultures around the world consistently show that, in looking for a long-term partner, women prefer men who have, or have the potential of, wealth, status, stability and durability.

It does appear that in some other cultures the work of motherhood is not left entirely up to one person the way it is here, so a baby can be handed around to many relatives, which gives the mother some blessed relief. Our society tends to elevate pregnancy and childbirth to unrealistic romantic heights then leave women on their own to struggle with the task, making them wonder what they are doing wrong when at times it all seems too much.

It is often assumed that a symbol, while not necessarily representing a truth, represents a belief, and so speaks directly for a historical frame of mind.

The truly haunting Other is not what lies outside the text but what lies outside the picturesque garden of the Western world.

You think a man is a man cause he wears team colors and guzzles beer in front of the tube Can't you see, boys, the sands of time are dribbling through the hourglass

From A Ride Along the Great Wall, Page 112:

That is one thing that in all my years among your folk I have never become accustomed to. The great importance that you attach to what gender one is.

Christy recognized that name as the same one Todd had used at the airport. "What does that word mean?" "Kilikina? That's your name in Hawaiian. Actually, it's Hawaiian for 'Christina.' 'Christy' would be Kiliki.

In Italy, they add work and life on to food and wine.

We may be half-Filipino, but the other half is pure, unadulterated racist.

We Irish were alone, of all countries, in this way of choosing our leaders. Everywhere else in the world 'tis a firstborn son who's heir to the title—in England, your primogeniture—and no questions asked. But tanaistry was how the Irish chiefs were made, and it had always served us well. Aside

When a language dies, so much more than words are lost. Language is the dwelling place of ideas that do not exist anywhere else. It is a prism through which to see the world.

Old-growth cultures, like old-growth forests, have not been exterminated. The land holds their memory and the possibility of regeneration. They are not only a matter of ethnicity or history, but of relationships born out of reciprocity between land and people.

If we are looking for models of self-sustaining communities, we need look no further than an old-growth forest. Or the old-growth cultures they raised in symbiosis with them.

When we call a place by name it is transformed from wilderness to homeland.

The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate, to be worthy of respect and moral concern, is to be a human.

Our teacher, Justin Neely, a young man devoted to language revival, explains that while there are several words for thank you, there is no word for please. Food was meant to be shared, no added politeness needed; it was simply a cultural given that one was asking respectfully. The missionaries took this absence as further evidence of crude manners.

They love to hear the old language," he said, "it's true." "But," he said, with fingers on his lips, "You don't have to speak it here." "If you speak it here," he said, patting his chest, "They will hear you.

Imagine raising children in a culture in which gratitude is the first priority.

So I offer, in its place, a braid of stories meant to heal our relationship with the world.

there is no word for please. Food was meant to be shared, no added politeness needed; it was simply a cultural given that one was asking respectfully.

The student told me that, when she came to the United States, the greatest culture shock she experienced was not language or food or technology, but waste.

Children hearing the Skywoman story from birth know in their bones the responsibility that flows between humans and the earth.