Quotes About Culture

Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity ? a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible. When foisted upon each generation anew, it renders us incapable of realizing just how much of our world has been unnecessarily ceded to a dark and barbarous past.

the disparity between Eastern and Western spirituality resembles that found between Eastern and Western medicine—with the arrow of embarrassment pointing in the opposite direction

Life under the Taliban is, to a first approximation, what millions of Muslims around the world want to impose on the rest of us. They long to establish a society in which—when times are good—women will remain vanquished and invisible, and anyone given to spiritual, intellectual, or sexual freedom will be slaughtered before crowds of sullen, uneducated men.

Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral….

The fact that religious faith has left its mark on every aspect of our civilization is not an argument in its favor, nor can any particular faith be exonerated simply because certain of its adherents made foundational contributions to human culture.

Good. Now. Let's talk our talk. Your beloved institution seems like it wants to step up to the next level. Be a culture player. Crank out all those smug nullities who can make the stylish, insipid, top-notch crap. Stuff we can jerk off to but that will also make us sorry, but not too sorry. Sexy sorry. Am I right?

Texas's main exports are cotton, oil, and preachers. Why

She must have been French, because she had more hair under her arm than I did. 

Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see.

Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.

Once a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.

ANKER  (A'NKER)   n.s.[ancker, Dut.] A liquid measure chiefly used at Amsterdam. It is the fourth part of the awm, and contains two stekans: each stekan consists of sixteen mengles; the mengle being equal

How little this is the state of our country, needs not to be told. The edicts of an English academy would, probably, be read by many, only that they may be sure to disobey them.

I consider the English alphabet only as it is English;

It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.

The greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion.

He has travelled. But is not human nature the same in every country, allowing only for different customs? — Do not Love, hatred, anger, malice, all the passions in short, good or bad, shew themselves by like effects in the faces, hearts,  and actions of the people of every country?

Sandor Ellix Katz

Given the War on Bacteria so culturally prominent in our time, the well-being of our microbial ecology requires regular replenishment and diversification now more than ever.

From something as simple as what goes in to a good meatloaf to the not so simple - religion, culture, how you should vote, every damn thing you think or believe, your reactions, your behavior - were partially shaped by who and what your parents were.