Quotes About Culture

descriptive ethics is a sociological discipline that attempts to describe the morals of a particular society, often by studying other cultures.

relativism refers to an ethical system in which right and wrong are not absolute and unchanging but relative to one's culture (cultural relativism) or one's own personal preferences (moral subjectivism).

If Catholics would simply live the Sacrament of Matrimony for one generation, we would witness a transformation of society and have a Christian culture.

The primary witnesses to Christmas are the accounts of Matthew and Luke. They were written as history, though for two different audiences, each with its own culture and conventions for preserving history. Matthew, the early records tell us, wrote originally in Hebrew for a Jewish-Christian audience. Luke wrote for Greek-speaking Gentiles and Jews.

All human societies eventually take on the form and structure of the families that comprise them. A disintegrating culture of marriage will lead to a disintegrating society. But you don't have to take my word for it. Just look around.

Everyone in our culture desires to some extent to be loving, yet many are not in fact loving. I therefore conclude that the desire to love is not itself love. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will - namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love. No matter how much we may think we are loving, if we are in fact not loving, it is because we have chosen not to love and therefor do not love our good intentions.

We have become a nation not of citizens but of consumers.

People call me old-fashioned. The younger guys on the force, they bust my chops because I don't speak their language. Harvey Bullock, dinosaur…because, nope, I didn't see that show last night, where they prance around and belt out awful covers and vote each other into the damn ocean or whatnot.

alter kocker like me. Street-word is Hal hired Coral

But they're already singing our praises! They are Americans. They toot their horns for anything.

Typographical laziness was slowly destroying our culture, according to Lexa and her pals. Inexactitude was death.

Du hast so viele Leben, wie du Sprachen sprichst. (You have as many lives as the number of languages you speak.)

Im Deutschen lügt man, wenn man höflich ist.

AUTHOR: Who writes anything good these days, Or reads with moderate intelligence! And what the dear young folk all praise, [4090] I've never seen such stupid nonsense.

Nichts Bessers weiß ich mir an Sonn- und Feiertagen Als ein Gespräch von Krieg und Kriegsgeschrei, Wenn hinten, weit, in der Türkei, Die Völker auf einander schlagen.

Mathematicians are a kind of Frenchman. They translate into their own language whatever is said to them and forthwith the thing is utterly changed.

Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquility of soul. Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites.

Només vaig escriure poemes d'amor quan estimava. Com hauria pogut escriure cançons d'odi, sense odi? [...] Com hauria pogut jo, per a qui només tenen importància la cultura i la barbàrie, odiar una nació [la francesa] que figura entre les més cultes del món, i a la qual devia una part tan gran de la meva formació?

Wer den Dichter will verstehen Muss in Dichters Lande gehen.

Beim Übersetzen muss man bis ans Unübersetzbare herangehen; alsdann wird man aber erst die fremde Nation und die fremde Sprache gewahr.

He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth

Superstition is a part of the very being of humanity; and when we fancy that we are banishing it altogether, it takes refuge in the strangest nooks and corners, and then suddenly comes forth again, as soon as it believes itself at all safe.

One of the magical side effects of having a culture of copying is the establishment of trends. People think this is a magical thing. How does it happen? Because it's legal [in the fashion industry] for people to copy one another.

No Bedouin wished to be outdone in showing kindness to a guest in his tent - or to be shamed by the charge of not being open-handed or magnanimous. p 55