Quotes About Culture

New York is the biggest collection of villages in the world.

Tie an Italian's hands behind his back and he'll be speechless.

Sex is the price women pay for marriage. Marriage is the price men pay for sex.

Steak swallowers zonked on Television!

America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set. America is this correct?

Amazed Generation! Found Generation! Diamond Generation! Brainwashed Generation! Amnesiac T.V. Bureaucracy Voidoids! New Wave Punk Generation! Neutron Bomb blast Babies! Apocalypse Spermatozoa! Did you grow up imbibing Microchip sex waters? Will you marry me in the next Millennium? Must I wait for the Great Year? - Listening to Susan Sontag

Prolixity is not alien to us in India. We are able to talk at some length.

It is ironic that many Filipinos learn to love the Philippines while abroad, not at home.

Filipinos are not a reading people, and despite the compulsory course on the life and works of Rizal today, from the elementary to the university levels, it is accepted that the 'Noli me Tangere' and 'El Filibusterismo' are highly regarded but seldom read (if not totally ignored). Therefore one asks, how can unread novels exert any influence?

Can you imagine the feeling of being an oppressed colonial being addressed respectfully by a colonizer in the mother country?

Filipinos have an aversion to blank walls.

History is part of our birthright. We must claim it back and make it transform our lives

Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.

Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.

Oyster, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails!

We must stop chasing dollars, stop lying, stop cheating, stop ignoring art, literature and all the refining agencies and instrumentalities of civilization.

MALE, n. A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex. The male of the human race is commonly known (to the female) as Mere Man. The genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.

MAMMALIA, n.pl. A family of vertebrate animals whose females in a state of nature suckle their young, but when civilized and enlightened put them out to nurse, or use the bottle.

MONEY, n. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it. An evidence of culture and a passport to polite society. Supportable property.

PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic.

IMMIGRANT, n. An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another.

While it might be fashionable for a lady to attend a publuc lecture on the afterlife, or participate in a seance from time to time, claiming to have seen a ghost yourself does not go down well in polite circles.

If you want to know a country, read its writers.