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Culture Quotes
"It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, 'As pretty as an airport."
4
"If there's one shade a woman of colour can't wear it's got to be the one everyone expects, hasn't it?"
4
"Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."
4
"Your culture is your limit; if you can't go beyond it, you will remain as a frog of your little lake!"
4
"Inspiration is not just a short-term momentum. It could take time and generations of change to truly build a culture of creativity."
4
"Malcolm Price embodies all that is Welsh, aside from the green valleys and male voice choirs. The will to win against insurmountable odds is a penchant of the Welsh, put this with a propensity to never say 'die' and that is what makes the Welsh so durable."
4
"London is a language. I guess all places are."
4
"The gypsies believe the bear to be a brother to man because he has the same body beneath his hide, because he drinks beer, because he enjoys music and because he likes to dance."
4
"These paintings say Mexico is an ancient thing that will still go on forever telling its own story in slabs of color leaves and fruits and proud naked Indians in a history without shame. Their great city of Tenochtitlan is still here beneath our shoes and history was always just like today full of markets and wanting."
4
"Witchcraft had once been widely used before cursed by the society. I see today the society presumes technology will have a different treatment."
4
"All the things that are part of your heritage make you British - that makes this country what it is. It's part of your history. And here, unlike America, it's still living history."
4
"Just that. Your family must be very different from mine.- I'd say so. - I laughed. - For one, no one wears their tiaras to breakfast.- Maxon smiled. - More of a dinner thing at the Singer house?- 'Of course.'"
4
"White folks have controlled New Orleans with money and guns, black folks have controlled it with magic and music, and although there has been a steady undercurrent of mutual admiration, an intermingling of cultures unheard of in any other American city, South or North; although there has prevailed a most joyous and fascinating interface, black anger and white fear has persisted, providing the ongoing, ostensibly integrated fete champetre with volatile and sometimes violent idiosyncrasies."
4
"A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul."
4
"To stomp about the world ignoring cultural differences is arrogant, to be sure, but perhaps there is another kind of arrogance in the presumption that we may ever really build a faultless bridge from one shore to another, or even know where the mist has ceded to landfall."
4
"It is as if the soul of the continent is weeping. Why does it weep? It weeps for the bones of the buffalo. It weeps for magic that has been forgotten. It weeps for the decline of poets.It weepsfor the black people who think like white people.It weepsfor the Indians who think like settlers.It weepsfor the children who think like adults.It weepsfor the free who think like prisoners.Most of all, it weepsfor the cowgirls who think like cowboys."
4
"Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity."
4
"People see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin."
4
"There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever."
4
"A gold tooth is to some blacks, what braces are to all whites."
4
"A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives."
4
"To most Americans, a dog is a potential mate. To some Chinese, a dog is potential meat."
4
"How does the saying go? When two locusts fight, it is always the crow that feasts.'Is that a Luo expression?' I asked. Sayid's face broke into a bashful smile. We have a similar expression in Luo,' he said, 'but actually I must admit that I read this particular expression in a book by Chinua Achebe. The Nigerian writer. I like his books very much. He speaks the truth about Africa's predicament. the Nigerian, the Kenya - it is the same. We share more than divides us."
4
"Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy."
4
"A people that doesn't live at the center of the world, as defined and described by its poets and storytellers, is in a bad way. The center of the world is where you live fully, where you know how things are done, how things are done rightly, done well."
4
"It is proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way."
4
"A woman can never be late when she is meeting with a man. But a man can most certainly be late when he is meeting with a woman."
3
"I find it inspiring to actively choose which traditions to celebrate and also come up with new ideas for traditions of my own."
3
"Twentieth century women's fashions (with their cult of thinness) are the last stronghold of the metaphors associated with the romanticizing of TB in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries."
3
"Could it be that simple? Tell one story to one generation and repeat it until it was accepted as fact?"
3
"Culture makes lies plausible through exposure to time. It makes prejudice seem like physics intergenerationally. It is therefore the most dangerous opponent of philosophy, because it feels the most credible to the average person."
3
"Confession. Years ago, I was invited to a cocktail party for an Asian-American networking group. As I introduced myself to a Japanese businessman, I reached out and firmly shook his hand. Much to my embarrassment now, I automatically took my other hand and wrapped our hands in a "hand hug. This is a common gesture of friendship in the South. As his wife approached, however, she appeared appalled and felt disrespected that I was touching her husband. Our cultural differences were marked. Despite this cultural mishap, I was able to redeem myself. We all moved past it and delighted in an interesting conversation. Physical touch is a touchy topic (pun intended), especially when various cultures are involved."
3
"A lot of people still maintain genre prejudice. I still meet matrons who tell me kindly that their children enjoyed my books but of course they never read them, and people who make sure I know they don't read that space-ship stuff. No, no, they read Literature-realism. Like The Help, or Fifty Shades of Grey."
3
"In Rome it seems as if there were so many things which are more wanted in the world than pictures."
3
"We're right to say that a culture that can't tolerate free speech is... there are a wide range of positive human experiences that are not available in that culture. And we're right to want those experiences."
3
"Here was the South Side--a million in captivity--stretching from this doorstep as far as the eye could see. And they didn't even read; depressed populations don't have the time or energy to spare. The affluent populations, which should have their help, didn't as far as could be discovered, read, either--they merely bought books and devoured them, but not in order to learn: in order to learn new attitudes."
3
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