Quotes About Cultural norms

We use words like sister and aunt as if they describe rigid laws of biology. But despite our genetic essentialism, these laws are really only rules of thumb. Under the right conditions, they can be readily broken.

Do you know what religion is, Martin, my friend? -I can barely remember Lord's Prayer. -A beautiful and well-crafted prayer. Poetry aside, a religion is really a moral code that is expressed through legends,myths, or any type of literary device in order to establish a system of beliefs, values , and rules with which to regulate a culture or a society.

Poesía aparte, una religión viene a ser un código moral que se expresa mediante leyendas, mitos o cualquier tipo de artefacto literario a fin de establecer un sistema de creencias, valores y normas con los que regular una cultura o una sociedad.

La mayoría de las tradiciones no son más que las enfermedades de una sociedad.

What do you expect? One has to pay some price for being able to piss standing up.

If this were the fifties, she'd be checking Sam's collars for lipstick stains. (Did people do that anymore? Why did women kiss collars, anyway? Besides, Sam almost always wore T-shirts.)

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

Sex is biological, but gender is mental.

Growing up in the 1950s, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, boys were supposed to be athletic.

I was fat because I lived in the Midwest in the 1970s, and everyone was a little fat then and only getting fatter.

Most of the misery had been generated by her conventional aspect, and not by her innate sensations.

We [vowed religious; nuns, monks] want to be squares, and we want others to be square, also. That's what religious have been doing. They're part of a square society. And let me be quite clear about the fact that liberalism doesn't get you off this hook, because liberals are part of the square society, too. It's better to be a liberal than a conservative, but they're both equally square.

Men don't like clever wives, they like charming ones!

Many of us commit the error of following the rules of our cultural community, which prevents us from stepping out of our caves and sharing our gifts in the world.

Countercultural liberties can open pathways to well-being that aren't recognized by mainstream culture—but can also result in a reckless disregard for self and others.

I don't know why it is that alcohol and tobacco are now bad, but jolts of caffeine are suddenly good. It is beyond me, and it makes me feel old.

We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.

Within our culture, every school has a swimming pool. We lived on the coast. People swam in the surf. It's a very sporty nation and at that particular time anyone who had an artistic bent was very much an outsider. So if you liked reading or ideas or playing the piano then your dad viewed you as a sissy, basically.

Breasts are a scandal because they shatter the border between motherhood and sexuality.

Of course men play roles, but women play roles too, blanker ones. They have, in the play of life, fewer good lines.

The tradition of industrious women is fundamental in my country, where sloth is a male privilege. It is forgivable in men, just as alcoholism is tolerated among them, because it is assumed that these are unavoidable biological characteristics: if you're born that way, you're born that way. . . . That isn't true of women, you understand.

Violence against women is universal and as old as civilization. When talking about human right, in truth we're referring to men's rights. If a man is beaten and deprived of his freedom, it's called torture. When a woman endures the same, it's called domestic violence and is still considered a private matter in most of the world.

Sus modales eran impecables, requisito esencial en la clase alta, dónde el uso debido del tenedor era más importante que las condiciones morales de un sujeto.

Why had that woman tried to give me her baby? It was a girl. No one wants a girl! the driver answered.