Quotes About Culture

America, the totem of modern democratic culture, was actually "latently" fascist. The absence of a "genuine" fascist movement in America, like the absence of any "genuine" anti-Semitism, was in fact a sign of how far the corruption had spread. As Herbert Marcuse put it somewhat later, "The fact that we cannot point to an SS or SA here, simply means that they are not necessary in this country."48

For Adam Smith, our moral life, as well as our cultural life, is a matter of imagination. The richer the inventory of objects for its diversion, and the deeper our own fellow feeling, the happier we become, but also the more we can perceive happiness in others.

Indian, Chinese, and other Third World intellectuals would encounter a century or two later: how to deal with a dominant culture that one admired but that threatened to overwhelm one's own heritage, and oneself with it.

Together with Aristotle, he created a civic tradition founded on the heroic image of the orator, who inspires his countrymen by a combination of eloquence, rational argument, and moral vision, and by doing so rallies his nation in a time of crisis. From Washington's farewell speech to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Kennedy's inaugural, Cicero and Aristotle would inspire a vital part of American political culture.

Liberalism, Lasch declared, is "politically and intellectually bankrupt"; in its place, postindustrial America has created a postmodern "culture of narcissism,… which in its decadence has carried the logic of individualism to the extreme.

Some states banned the teaching of German in private and public schools alike.

South Dakota even prohibited the use of the German language over the telephone.

While Egypt gave the world its astronomy and science, China its art, and Mesopotamia its religion, the sole contribution of Nordic civilization was the factory. "As a system of culture," Du Bois announced, white civilization "runs chiefly to marvelous contrivances for enslaving the many, and enriching the few, and murdering both."42

They relativized man, in the sense that they made who we are dependent to some degree on our experience in a particular time and place, rather than solely on some inborn quality or sense.

The point of this book is that being Scottish is more than just a matter of nationality or place of origin or clan or even culture. It is also a state of mind, a way of viewing the world and our place in it.

a mass of ignorant, culturally degraded citizens easily becomes an immense drag on the system. They become easy prey to demagogues and applaud every attempt to undermine the foundations of that "natural liberty" which they have enjoyed in the first place.

Demographics is destiny

Civilizations do not then "fall"—they are merely replaced by another culture, which is the product of the new population.

Herein lies the key to understanding the rise and fall of all civilizations. In any given territory, the people making up the society in that territory create a culture which is unique to themselves.

Because of the hand, the sign of the mano in fica. That gesture is now only used by Italians.

Human kinship systems vary enormously but not limitlessly. There are always rules prohibiting sex (and hence marriage) with certain kinds of kin.

But music is, at the very minimum, inflammatory, exclusionary, divisive, encouraging of snobbery and solipsism.

amazing became the It utterance of the millennium's first decade. Never were so many so amazed at so much that amounts to so little. If

J'aimais les peintures idiotes, dessus de portes, décors, toiles de saltimbanques, enseignes, enluminures populaires ; la littérature démodée, latin d'église, livres érotiques sans orthographe, romans de nos aïeules, contes de fées, petits livres de l'enfance, opéras vieux, refrains niais, rythmes naïfs.

La musique savante manque à notre désir

Religion is the metaphysics of the masses.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

Every nation ridicules other nations -- and all are right.

The pronunciation of both Sami and Portuguese languages is strikingly similar: the Portuguese evolved from folksy Latin while the Sami evolved from reindeers' howling.