Quotes About Culture

Even if Africans chose to adopt the mores of the English, they could never overcome the powerful view that the differences between the groups were elemental and largely insurmountable.

British people were supposed to be reserved, but apparently if you added a dog to the mix, reserve went straight out the window.

If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell? No, said the priest, not if you did not know. Then why, asked the Eskimo earnestly, did you tell me?

People who read are not too lazy to turn on the television; they prefer books.

Why, why in the blue-green world write this sort of thing? Funny written culture, I guess; we pass things on.

I'm getting used to this planet and to this curious human culture which is as cheerfully enthusiastic as it is cheerfully crue

Somewhere, and I can't find where, I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?

How come you forget English when you swear?

It perplexes me how many people write books where everyone comes from the same basic set of backgrounds—middle class, white, straight, etc. It's like writing a book set in a world without coincidences, accidents, and colors. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? It reduces drama and conflicts and narrows the possible variety of points of view. And really, the whole magic of books is to show us the world through someone else's eyes. Experiencing the Other is what novels are for.

Everyone in the world was programmed by the place they were born, hemmed in by their beliefs, but you had to at least try to grow your own brain. Otherwise, you might as well be living on a reservation, worshipping a bunch of bogus gods.

You don't need some whitefella's permission to adapt your own culture." "But what if it's not mine?" Darcy stared at her plate. "I eat meat. I don't pray. It feels weird, erasing a god and using him as a mortal.

It's embarrassing when the Clash are slavishly acclaimed by critics as the rock 'n' roll band of the decade—and yet, what other band has so successfully absorbed the music of so many cultures, digested it, and emerged with a startling, evocative language of their own?

Seni din, cinsellik ve TV ile aptallaÅŸt?r?rlar ki, Sen de kendini ak?ll?, s?n?fs?z ve özgür san?rs?n.

Mr. Cultier, why do you pronounce your name Cult-E-A if you're American?" "How would you have me pronounce it, Bob?

Everything bad gets shot at in America, says John Cole, and everything good too.

British and French patriotism are completely different emotions. Ours is a bit shamefaced and populist, theirs is the province of the intellectual.

It may say something about human nature that a surprising number of Americans—mostly men—wound up joining Indian society rather than staying in their own. They emulated Indians, married them, were adopted by them, and on some occasions even fought alongside them. And the opposite almost never happened: Indians almost never ran away to join white society.

Whether… civilization has most promoted or most injured the general happiness of man is a question that may be strongly contested," he wrote in 1795. "[Both] the most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found in the countries that are called civilized.

When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs," Benjamin Franklin wrote to a friend in 1753, "[yet] if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.

Thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those Aborigines having from choice become European," a French émigré named Hector de Crèvecoeur lamented in 1782. "There must be in their social bond something singularly captivating and far superior to anything to be boasted of among us.

Whether… civilization has most promoted or most injured the general happiness of man is a question that may be strongly contested," he wrote in 1795. "[Both] the most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found in the countries that are called civilized." When

Some scholars, including Weatherford, believe that the Great Wall of China was built as much to keep their own people in as to keep the "barbarians" out.

Accel's culture of training and trusting young investors seemed to hold the secret of success.

Por lo que veo —dijo Michiko, bajando la vista hacia su plato—, en Occidente tampoco sienten mucha simpatía por los zurdos.