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Culture Quotes
"Our cultural lens is so much a part of us that we are not even aware of how obvious it is to others. Like the nose on your face, you may forget that it is there, but everyone else sees it. I can't look at you and not see your nose."
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"Could it be that simple? Tell one story to one generation and repeat it until it was accepted as fact?"
13
"England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare,but the Bible made England."
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"The Frenchman works until he can play. The American works until he can't play; and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he never worked at all."
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"Present global culture is a kind of arrogant newcomer. It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and after looking about for a few thousand years declares itself in possession of eternal truths. But in a world that is changing as fast as ours, this is a prescription for disaster. No nation, no religion, no economic system, no body of knowledge, is likely to have all the answers for our survival. There must be many social systems that would work far better than any now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them."
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"There are many madnesses in every culture! All cultures need reason!"
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"Unfortunately, unapproachable leaders create a tense environment that may prevent their people from bringing their best strengths and talents or challenges and solutions forward."
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"I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood.... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world."
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"In Seattle, I soon found that my radical ideas and aesthetic explorations - ideas and explorations that in Richmond, Virginia, might have gotten me stoned to death with hush puppies - were not only accepted but occasionally applauded."
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"Bad Culture is the contaminated oxygen your staff breath, as they get indoctrinated by your limiting context."
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"The Church is not called to overthrow government but to influence culture."
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"Regarding the fitness craze: America has lost its soul, now it's trying to save its body."
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"Every category has its snobs: music, books, movies. There are so many things a man is only pressured into liking or disliking."
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"The way of the consumerist culture is to spend so much energy chasing happiness that it has none left to be happy."
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"Orwell wrote easily and well about small humane pursuits, such as bird watching, gardening and cooking, and did not despise popular pleasures like pubs and vulgar seaside resorts. In many ways, his investigations into ordinary life and activity prefigure what we now call 'cultural studies."
13
"If there's one shade a woman of colour can't wear it's got to be the one everyone expects, hasn't it?"
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"Why are we so afraid of silence? Teenagers cannot study without their records; they walk along the street with their transistors. Grownups are as bad if not worse; we turn on the TV or the radio the minute we come into the house or start the car. The pollution of noise in our cities is as destructive as the pollution of air. We show our fear of silence in our conversation: I wonder if the orally-minded Elizabethan's used "um" and "er" the way we do? And increasingly prevalent is what my husband calls an articulated pause: "You know." We interject "you know" meaninglessly into every sentence, in order that the flow of our speech should not be interrupted by such a terrifying thing as silence."
13
"If the African stars do not rise, are not known, remain obscure, their stories are not told " who and where is the African story teller? Your challenge if you are in the media is to continually ask if you are doing enough, using the appropriate strategies and at the right platforms. Let's create and promote international and global stars with the talent and skills in our people, no one will do it for us."
13
"Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers. Even if that reality is patently invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged with gifts that support and promote the common cultural lies. The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic systems. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident. It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy."
13
"Barbecue is an incredibly democratic food. It's cheaper than McDonald's in many places and far more delicious. On the other hand, the only reason it can be that cheap is they use commodity hogs, the worst of the worst, which is - you know, it's an industry kind of ruining North Carolina."
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"It was a subtle refinement of God to learn Greek when he wished to write a book " and that he did not learn it better."
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"The music we listen to may not define who we are. But it's a damn good start."
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"Sex has become more and more attractive because of its condemnation by priests."
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"While good old-fashioned manners and etiquette have worked for centuries, new standards and expectations have come into play with the modern world. Behaviors which would have been appalling in the past are now socially acceptable."
12
"The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it's so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for 'Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter.' He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just never caught on."
12
"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."
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"The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood."
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"What sells, today, is whatever Fucks You Up - whatever short-circuits your brain and grounds it out for the longest possible time."
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"My mom loved rock n' roll. My father hated it. We couldn't play it when he was around. He liked classical music and Duke Ellington."
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"With its grace and carelessness, it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though [all] could be swept into a nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm."
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"In Russia, as I sat there day after day wearing headphones, listening to the interpreter struggle to make our words relevant, I wondered if we could establish meaningful rapport with a nation that had never seen raisins dance in dark glasses on TV...never had a garage sale."
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"Stupid is the New Smart."
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"But I have to say this in defense of humankind: In no matter what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got here. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these games going on that could make you act crazy, even if you weren't crazy to begin with. Some of the crazymaking games going on today are love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf, and girls' basketball."
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