Quotes About Culture

Even if national peculiarities in character and in laws occasion differences in the curve which the woman movement describes in the different countries, yet everywhere the movement has had the same causes, must follow the same main direction, and - sooner or later - must have the same effects.

When I was 12 years old, I went to Natchitoches, La.; it was summer vacation with my family. We visited a plantation, Melrose. And I met an Afro-American woman who was a painter. I already had some idea of what I wanted to do in life, and one of the things that interested me was painting.

A woman can laugh and cry in three seconds and it's not weird. But if a man does it, it's very disturbing. The way I'd describe it is like this: I have been allowed inside the house of womanhood, but I feel that they wouldn't let me in any of the interesting rooms.

The culture looms much larger than you do as a parent, and one can hardly rely on the culture to impart the lesson that womanhood is valuable.

I like to say hip-hop was born when I was in my mother's womb.

India is one of those few countries in the world where violence against women starts in the womb, before the girl is even born.

Americans like fat books and thin women.

Women of African descent, since the beginning of time, have altered their hair, decorated it and used it to designate status.

Women make natural anarchists and revolutionaries because they've always been second-class citizens, kinda having had to claw their way up. I mean, who made up all the rules in the culture? Men - white male corporate society. So why wouldn't a woman want to rebel against that?

I feel women with long hair have a completely different charm - they can attract more attention and if I may say so, they look so Indian!

If men were meant to be a dominant power, men would be on this earth by themselves. So, I don't understand when women's rights are challenged - because you're talking about human rights. You talk about subjugating an entire culture that we heavily depend on for everything we need for survival.

I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women... no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.

I'm really interested in older women, to be honest, because they have lived a life that I've not yet lived. So I really want to learn from them, and I think culturally we tend to dispose of women once they get to a certain age and they don't look a certain way.

As a feminist of Egyptian and Muslim descent, my life's work has been informed by the belief that religion and culture must never be used to justify the subjugation of women.

Egypt was the first democracy in the Middle East. Women were unveiled in the 1920s. Egypt is a country of civilization, of culture. It shouldn't be suffering.

I really think that Muslim people should stop raising their boys and girls that way. They instill a macho culture right from the start of childhood. And if you have never learned to treat girls and women respectfully, you will never be able to act differently later on than the men in your culture, and in your family. That's fact.

To her credit, Madam Walker discerned that black women wanted to conform to white Victorian models of beauty. She was aware of the double- sidedness of her products - helping black women appear more European in look, with straight hair - but she always maintained that she was simply selling products that promoted hair growth.

If you look around Brazil you see pregnant women everywhere. Here you don't see that as much. There the only thing they do is babies, babies, babies! Especially the poor families.

Black women I'm talking to you, because it's not white women, it's not Latino, it's not Native American - I checked, it's y'all. The self hate is ridiculous. Why do you hate yourself so much, why do you hate your texture, why do you hate your culture, why do you hate your history?

Books about women and children are not valued in the same way as a book about war. And why is that? I don't know.

If there is one thing that the women and men of the late 20th century who have an awareness and enjoyment of history can be sure of, it is that Islam was not sent from Heaven to foster egotism and mediocrity.

When I was a kid, I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now. But I don't think there are too many films coming out these days that we're going to look at in the future and say, 'This is one of the great ones.'

Women and men grow up with both sexes. Our mothers and fathers mean a lot to us, so it's just a question of finding a balance between their influences. I've found mine. And it tends to be more on the male side. I mean male side the way we understand it in the West.

It is essential that God created men and women to be one, as it is said in the first chapters of the Bible. So I think even if our culture is against marriage as essential form of relations between human beings, between women and men. I think our nature is always present, and we can understand it if we will understand it.