Cultural Quotes

Over the past several years, all of us as Canadians, and as members of the North American cultural and economic environment, have been to a greater or lesser extent party to a significant attitudinal change towards our culture. ~ Alex Campbell

It is the time to tremendous awakening toward "inquisitiveness" with cross-cultural sharing through technology and inner insights. ~ Pearl Zhu

And what excites me most is the type of public, the fact that the Parisian people have a broader cultural understanding than many Americans do. ~ Herb Ritts

When it first emerged, Twitter was widely derided as a frivolous distraction that was mostly good for telling your friends what you had for breakfast. Now it is being used to organize and share news about the Iranian political protests, to provide customer support for large corporations, to share interesting news items, and a thousand other applications that did not occur to the founders when they dreamed up the service in 2006. This is not just a case of cultural exaptation: people finding a new use for a tool designed to do something else. In Twitter's case, the users have been redesigning the tool itself. The convention of replying to another user with the @ symbol was spontaneously invented by the Twitter user base. Early Twitter users ported over a convention from the IRC messaging platform and began grouping a topic or event by the "hash-tag" as in "#30Rock" or "inauguration." The ability to search a live stream of tweets - which is likely to prove crucial to Twitter's ultimate business model, thanks to its advertising potential - was developed by another start-up altogether. Thanks to these innovations, following a live feed of tweets about an event - political debates or Lost episodes - has become a central part of the Twitter experience. But for the first year of Twitter's existence, that mode of interaction would have been technically impossible using Twitter. It's like inventing a toaster oven and then looking around a year later and discovering that all your custo ~ Steven Johnson

I don't know why but I love this kind of project, when it's a little difficult and when you have a history. The beginning of the story of viticulture was in the Middle East, and it was a different generation than the science and logistics of today. My passion is to go into the past to make wine. Wine is something cultural, not only something to drink. I always try to find the identity of the place. ~ Stephane Derenoncourt

Bisexual people are the primary conduits for the cultural conversation that America is having about gay rights. ~ Jennifer Baumgardner

My father had inklings of my cultural aspirations. He would take me to the library, things like that. But he wasn't one of those dads who had read George Orwell and was a member of the Communist party. We had no books at home. ~ Gary Kemp

It is difficult for Iranian scholars and universities to retain their independence and to be seen as doing so, when cultural warfare is being carried out by some of their American partners. Indeed, such irresponsible behavior basically serves to intensify suspicion and in reality decreases the opportunity for real and meaningful dialogue. ~ Mohammad Marandi

I was bringing the whole music, hip-hop, art, break dancing and urban cultural thing to the downtown table. ~ Fab Five Freddy

Low-income Americans' potential for mobility is often impaired by family breakdown, cultural dysfunction, and the polarization of norms ~ Yuval Levin

For many Westerners, "it's natural" seems to mean "it's good." This view is wrong and comes from shopping in supermarkets and living in landscaped environments. Plants evolved toxins to deter animals, fungi, and bacteria from eating them. The list of "natural" foods that need processing to detoxify them goes on and on. Early potatoes were toxic, and the Andean peoples ate clay to neutralize the toxin. Even beans can be toxic without processing. In California, many hunter-gatherer populations relied on acorns, which, similar to manioc, require a labor intensive, multiday leaching process. Many small-scale societies have similarly exploited hardy, tropical plants called cycads for food. But cycads contain a nerve toxin. If not properly processed, they can cause neurological symptoms, paralysis, and death. Numerous societies, including hunter-gatherers, have culturally evolved an immense range of detoxification techniques for cycads. By contrast with our species, other animals have far superior abilities to detoxify plants. Humans, however, lost these genetic adaptations and evolved a dependence on cultural know-how, just to eat. ~ Joseph Henrich

Wherever on this planet ideals of personal freedom and dignity apply, there you will find the cultural inheritance of England. ~ Karel Capek

Music escapes ideological characterization. Just as there are some social scientists who believe that what cannot be measured does not truly exist, and some psychologists used to believe that consciousness does not exist because it cannot be observed by instruments, so ideologists find anything that escapes their conceptual framework threatening - because ideologists want a simple principle, or a few simple principles, by which all things may be judged. When I was a student, I lived with a hard-line dialectical materialist who said that Schubert was a typical petit bourgeois pessimist, whose music would die out once objective causes for pessimism ceased to exist. But I suspect that even he was not entirely happy with this formulation. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

.....while language facilitates communication within the group, it also crystallises cultural differences, and actually heightens the barriers between groups. ~ Arthur Koestler

Cultural creatives take a stand for a more spiritualized, personalized, and integrated culture. ~ Barbara Marx Hubbard

Wildland firefighters do not enjoy the cultural prestige that structural firefighters do. They do not wax their fire engines and cruise down the local parade route, lights flashing; they are not the subject of countless popular books and movies; major politicians do not honor their sacrifices on the Senate floor or from the Rose Garden; they do not have bagpipe bands, fancy equipment, enduring icons, or other signifiers of honor verifying the importance of their activity. ~ Matthew Desmond

....the line of ill-intentional Egyptologist, equipped with a ferocious erudition , have commited their well known crime against science, by becoming guilty of a deliberate falsification of the history of humanity.
Supported by the governing powers of all the Western countries , this ideology, based on a moral and intellectual swindle, easily won out over the true scientific current developed by a parallel group of Egyptologist of good will, whose intellectual uprightness and even courage cannot be stressed stronly enough.
The new Egyptological ideology , born at the opportune monment, reinforced the theorectical bases of imperialist ideology. That is why it easily drowned out the voice of science, by throwing the veil of fasificacation over historical truth. This ideology was spread with the help of considerable publicity and taught the world over, because it alone had the material and financial means for its own propagation.
Thus imperialism, like the prehistoric hunter, first killed the being spiritually and culturally, before trying to eliminate it physically. The negation of the history and intellectual accomplishments of Black Africans was cultural, mental murder,which preceded and paved the way for their genocide here and there in the world. ~ Cheikh Anta Diop

Laughing in the cultural industry is mockery of happiness. ~ Theodor W. Adorno

When, over lunch in Philadelphia, I ask the distinguished University of Pennsylvania historian, Alan Charles Kors about Cultural Studies, he shakes his head in dismay. "Cultural Studies," he laments, "is now dominant in all departments of literature and is increasingly big in history, sociology, and cultural anthropology, though less so in political science." His own capsule definition of Cultural Studies? "It sees culture as a means of assigning roles, power, obedience, and resources - and examines the way in which culture accomplishes that. ~ Bruce Bawer

The notion that women shouldn't care about personal success
or the work that gets them there
is disengenuous; it is impossible for women not to have jobs anymore, so it doesn't make sense to expect them to structure their lives around getting married. The real failure is our cultural incapacity to make room for women to live and thrive outside of traditional conceptions of femininity and relationships. After all, we can eat without marriage, but not without work. ~ Samhita Mukhopadhyay

The Moon Pie is a bedrock of the country store and rural tradition. It is more than a snack. It is a cultural artifact. ~ William R. Ferris

Creativity would not exist as successfully or efficiently without its social world. The social is not the by-product - it is the decisive mechanism by which cultural products and cultural producers are generated, evaluated and sent to the market. ~ Elizabeth Currid

Now, as it happens, theology is actually a pitilessly demanding discipline concerning an immense, profoundly sophisticated legacy of hermeneutics, dialectics, and logic; it deals in minute detail with a vast variety of concrete historical data; over the centuries, it has incubated speculative systems of extraordinary rigor and intricacy, many of whose questions and methods continue to inform contemporary philosophy; and it does, when all is said and done, constitute the single intellectual, moral, spiritual, and cultural tradition uniting the classical, medieval, and early modern worlds. ~ David Bentley Hart

We discover truth by asking rapier-like questions that cut through the thick fog of doctrinarism. Artists and philosophers must be subversive: we need these rebellious cynics to ask questions, they must resist cultural norms; seek out truths that are not self-evident and challenge everything. Doubt, not blind belief, is essential for discovering truth. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

We are surrounded by worn-out, banal, useless and exhausted images, limping and dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution. ~ Werner Herzog

It is not easy to be stranded between two worlds, the sad truth is that we can never feel completely comfortable in either world ~ Sharon Kay Penman

Historians of a generation ago were often shocked by the violence with which scientists rejected the history of their own subject as irrelevant; they could not understand how the members of any academic profession could fail to be intrigued by the study of their own cultural heritage. What these historians did not grasp was that scientists will welcome the history of science only when it has been demonstrated that this discipline can add to our understanding of science itself and thus help to produce, in some sense, better scientists. ~ I. Bernard Cohen

The statements of certain western officials show that contrary to their absurd claims, westerners are disqualified, and impetuous, lacking any cultural background. ~ Hamid-Reza Assefi

Sometimes it occurs to me that the job of a serious cultural critic mostly consists in telling the generality of people that their opinions - on films, on books, on all manner of widgets, gadgets and even the latest electronic fidgets - simply aren't up to scratch. ~ Will Self

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam or Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being. ~ Rumi

Offer me?" A shrill note of indignation entered her voice. "Young man, there are three things that make Britain great. The first is our inability at playing sports."
How does that make Britain great?"
"Despite the certainty of loss, we try anyway with the absolute conviction that this year will be the one, regardless of all evidence to the contrary!"
I raised my eyebrows, but that simply meant I could see my blood more clearly, so looked away and said nothing.
"The second," she went on, "is the BBC. It may be erratic, tabloid, under-funded and unreliable, but without the World Service, obscure Dickens adaptions, the Today Program and Doctor Who, I honestly believe that the cultural and communal capacity of this country would have declined to the level of the apeman, largely owing to the advent of the mobile phone!"
"Oh," I said, feeling that something was expected. "Oh" was enough.
"And lastly, we have the NHS!"
"This is an NHS service?" I asked incredulously.
"I didn't say that, I merely pointed out that the NHS makes Britain great. Now lie still. ~ Kate Griffin

Hispanic gives us all one ultimate paternal cultural progenitor: Spain. The diverse cultures already on the American shores when the Europeans arrived, as well as those introduced because of the African slave trade, are completely obliterated by the term. Hispanic is nothing more than a concession made by the U. S. legislature when they saw they couldn't get rid of us. If we won't go away, why not at least Europeanize us, make us presentable guests at the dinner table, take away our feathers and rattles and civilize us once and for all. ~ Ana Castillo

Then if it is denied that the unity at that level is the interconnection of the plurality or dissimilarity of religions as of parts constituting a whole, rather that every one of the religions at the level of ordinary existence is not part of a whole, but is a whole in itself-then the 'unity' that is meant is 'oneness' or 'sameness' not really of religions, but of the God of religions at the level of transcendence (i.e. esoteric), implying thereby that at the level of ordinary existence (i.e. exoteric), and despite the plurality and diversity of religions, each religion is adequate and valid in its own limited way, each authentic and conveying limited though equal truth. The notion of a plurality of truth of equal validity in the plurality and diversity of religion is perhaps aligned to the statements and general conclusions of modern philosophy and science arising from the discovery of a pluraity and diversity of laws governing the universe having equal validity each in its own cosmological system. The trend to align modern scientific discovery concerning the systems of the universe with corresponding statements applied to human society, cultural traditions,and values is one of the characteristic features of modernity.

The position of those who advocate the theory of the transcendent unity of religions is based upon the assumption that all religions, or the major religions of mankind, are revealed religions. They assume that the universality and transcendence of e ~ Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas

The cultural insistence that parenting is the 'most important' job in the world is a smart way to satiate unappreciated women without doing a damn thing for them. ~ Jessica Valenti

I have to write people who feel honest but also push our cultural ball forward. ~ Lena Dunham

As Aboriginal people we have always retained our resilience, our humour and our cultural integrity - we will always retain our dreams and a vision for the future for our people. ~ Ken Wyatt

Not surprisingly, there is a cultural divide between American and British actors regarding the self-promotion associated with new media. ~ Gina Bellman

For Indigenous peoples , the impact of separating us from our heritage goes directly to the heart that pumps life through our peoples. To expect a people to be able to enjoy their culture without their cultural heritage and their sacred belongings is equivalent to amputating their legs and digging up the ground and asking them to run a marathon. ~ Mick Dodson

The saddest part of the human race is we're obsessed with this idea of 'us and them,' which is really a no-win situation, whether it's racial, cultural, religious or political. ~ Dave Matthews

When exactly did this downward cultural spiral begin, this loss of tact and refinement and understanding that some things should not be said or directly represented? When did we no longer appreciate that to dignify certain modes of behavior, manners, and ways of being with artistic representation was implicitly to glorify and promote them? There is, as Adam Smith said, a deal of ruin in a nation: and this truth applies as much to a nation's culture as to its economy. The work of cultural destruction, while often swifter, easier, and more self-conscious than that of construction, is not the work of a moment. Rome wasn't destroyed in a day. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

I think we're always in the process of writing and rewriting the story of our lives, forming our experiences into a narrative that makes sense. Much of that work involves demythologizing family myths and cultural myths - getting free of what we have been told about ourselves. ~ Sam Keen

Neo-Spenglerians who are attuned to the racial view of history (call them "racists" for convenience) hold that the "final" phase of a Culture - the imperialistic stage - is final only because the cultural organism destroys its body and kills its soul by this process. Obviously, if we are to draw analogies between cultures and organisms we must agree that the soul of the organism dies only because of the death of the body. The soul can sicken - the soul of the West is now diseased and perhaps mortally ill - but it cannot die unless the organism itself dies. And this, point out the racists, is precisely what has happened to all previous cultures; death of the organism being the natural result of the suicidal process of imperialism. ~ Willis Carto

We may abandon a holistic, metaphysical ideal of natural law reconciled with cultural configurations; but we cannot abandon a vision of a humanity freed from such pathologies without simultaneously siding with the worst kind of system-reproductive education. ~ Mark Murphy

In most of the European countries - France stands out in its resistance to this particular form of American cultural imperialism - the national film industries were forced onto the defensive after the war by such binding agreements. ~ Fredric Jameson

Americans who want to perform in Europe face a cultural and vocal uphill battle. We're considered good students, very professional and often technically sound; but though there are droves of us to choose from, a European singer is almost always going to be the first choice of a European company - and often, of an American company as well. ~ Renee Fleming

True cultural connection is the Holy Grail for brands if they want to create an enduring emotional relationship with people. ~ Albert Chmielowski

Dare I ask Mao and his Communist Party?
I fear my throat will be cut into two pieces.
In the name of revolution, for thought crimes,
Such questions can turn me to ashes. ~ Zoe S. Roy

The pleasure of the sentence is to a high degree cultural. The artifact created by rhetors, grammarians, linguists, teachers, writers, parents
this artifact is mimicked in a more or less ludic manner; we are playing with an exceptional object, whose paradox has been articulated by linguistics: immutably structured and yet infinitely renewable: something like chess. ~ Roland Barthes

While much psychology emphasizes the familial causes of angst in humans, the cultural component carries as much weight, for culture is the family of the family. If the family of the family has various sicknesses, then all families within that culture will have to struggle with the same malaises. There is a saying cultura cura, culture cures. If the culture is a healer, the families learn how to heal; they will struggle less, be more reparative, far less wounding, far more graceful and loving. In a culture where the predator rules, all new life needing to be born, all old life needing to be gone, is unable to move and the soul-lives of its citizenry are frozen with both fear and spiritual famine. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

In a world facing the revolt of ragged and hungry masses of God's children; in a world torn between the tensions of East and West, white and colored, individuals and collectivists; in a world whose cultural and spiritual power lags so far behind her technological capabilities that we live each day on the verge of nuclear co-annihilation; in this world, nonviolence is no longer an option for intellectual analysis, it is an imperative for action ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

History lessons remind us that the states in which we live, their institutions, even their laws, have come to us through conflict, often of the most bloodthirsty sort. Our daily diet of news brings us reports of the shedding of blood, often in regions quite close to our homelands, in circumstances that deny our conception of cultural normality altogether. We succeed, all the same, in consigning the lessons both of history and of reportage to a special and separate category of "otherness" which invalidate our expectations of how our own world will be tomorrow and the day after not at all. Our institutions and our laws, we tell ourselves, have set the human potentiality for violence about with such restraints that violence in everyday life will be punished as criminal by our laws, while its use by our institutions of state will take the particular form of "civilised warfare. ~ Steven Pinker

What is even more striking than the negational character of this political culture is the absence of robust and constructive affirmations. Vibrant cultures make space for leisure, philosophical reflection, scientific and intellectual mastery, and artistic and literary expression, among other things. Within the larger Christian community in America, one can find such vitality in pockets here and there. Yet where they do exist, they are eclipsed by the greater prominence and vast resources of the political activists and their organizations. What is more, there are few if any places in the pronouncements and actions of the Christian Right or the Christian Left (none that I could find) where these gifts are acknowledged, affirmed, or celebrated. What this means is that rather than being defined by its cultural achievements, its intellectual and artistic vitality, its service to the needs of others, Christianity is defined to the outside world by its rhetoric of resentment and the ambitions of a will in opposition to others. ~ James Davison Hunter

Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as 'enlightenment. ~ David Brin

The cultural ban on having sex with your friends is an inevitable offshoot of a societal belief that the only acceptable reason to have sex is to lead to a monogamous marriagelike relationship. ~ Dossie Easton

It was said that Chile was not ready to vote for a woman, it was traditionally a sexist country. In the end, the reverse happened: the fact of being a woman became a symbol of the process of cultural change the country was undergoing. ~ Michelle Bachelet

These coupling certainly do not fit with the mainstream idea that genes, or at least organisms, are hell-bent on reproducing themselves. They do fit, however, with the idea of a social role for sex, and they fit with the idea that sexual reproduction is a spandrel, a by-product of some other phenomenon. If Roughgarden is on to something, she believes it could have cultural as well as scientific implications. The orthodoxy of biology has corroded our culture like battery acid, she says, In general, we play out the roles prescribed for us by that culture - aggressive male and coy female - because deviation from its "norm" results in emotional and physical violence, bigotry, personal guilt, and criminalized behaviors. If biology has been getting it wrong though, the new orthodoxy could trigger an infusion of tolerance; perhaps the anomalous prevalence of sexual reproduction will end up having deeper repercussions outside of science than within it. ~ Michael Brooks

People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite. ~ Dan Quayle

Nothing about multiculturalism antagonized Rachel. She liked all kinds of food, clothing, cultural customs, and music. The one thing that held her aloof was a fear of offending through ignorance. ~ Ausma Zehanat Khan

Norman Rockwell saved my life. ~ Jane Allen Petrick

The all American work ethic, destructive enough by itself, also packs a gender double standard that strip-mines the natural resources of both parents. It has taught us that as their earnings and success increase, men become "more manly," while women become "less feminine." This perverse cultural dynamic gives fathers an incentive to stay away from their families and kill themselves at work, while coercing mothers to limit their career commitment, which in turn limits their wages and shortchanges their families. ~ Letty Cottin Pogrebin

In the civilization of our times, it is normal, and almost obligatory, for cookery and fashion to take up most of the culture sections, for chefs and fashion designers now enjoy the prominence that before was given to scientists, composers and philosophers. Gas burners, stoves and catwalks meld, in the cultural coordinates of our time, with books, laboratories and operas, while TV stars and great footballers exert the sort of influence over habits, taste and fashion that was previously the domain of teachers and thinkers ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

Western liberals who rightly condemn imperialism [are] yet are blind to the cultural imperialism they are performing when they silence my critiques of misogyny. They behave as if they want to save my culture and faith from me, and forget that they are immune to the violations about which I speak. ~ Mona Eltahawy

Today, few Americans born after 1980 are familiar with the Jonestown tragedy, although anyone with an Internet connection can listen to the haunting tape of the community's mass extinction. And while the phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid" has entered the cultural lexicon, its reference to gullibility and blind faith is a slap in the face of the Jonestown residents who were goaded into dying by the lies of Jim Jones, and, especially insulting to the 304 murdered children. As the FBI files clearly document, the community devolved into a living hell from which there was no escape. ~ Julia Scheeres

If in matters of faith and belief children are at risk of being swept downstream by this intellectual current or that cultural rapid, we as their parents must be more certain than ever to hold to anchored, unmistakable moorings clearly recognizable to those of our own household. It won't help anyone if we go over the edge with them, explaining through the roar of the falls all the way down that we really did know the Church was true and that the keys of the priesthood really were lodged there but we just didn't want to stifle anyone's freedom to think otherwise. No, we can hardly expect the children to get to shore safely if the parents don't seem to know where to anchor their own boat. ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

Lack of personal morality plus "politically correct" prohibition against judging others' behavior and naming immorality sets up a social environment receptive and vulnerable to a tyrannical government. A tyrannical government transforms every aspect of the cultural day-to-day lives of everyone under its control across all areas from the educational and penal systems to fine art and entertainment dictates right on down to housing regulations and food availabilities. ~ Alexandra York

I think we're not looking sufficiently at what is happening at the grassroots in the country. We have not emphasized sufficiently the cultural revolution that we have to make among ourselves in order to force the government to do differently. Things do not start with governments. ~ Grace Lee Boggs

Hindus and Westerners alike see in the meat-eating taboos of India a triumph of morals over appetite. This is a dangerous misrepresentation of cultural processes. Hindu vegetarianism was a victory not of spirit over matter but of reproductive over productive forces. ~ Marvin Harris

From a cultural point of view the richest moments in civilization, in history, have occurred when the boundaries separating popular and creative literature disappear, and literature becomes simultaneously both things-something that enriches all audiences, something that can satisfy all kinds of mentalities and knowledge and education, and at the same time is creative and artistic and popular. Dickens, Hugo, and Dumas are extraordinary cases in point; and in Spain in the nineteenth century there are many other examples, such as Perez Galdos. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

In my view, Africa's real problems are cultural. ~ Hugh Masekela

The child is not a citizen of the future; he (sic) is a citizen from the very first moment of life and also the most important citizen because he represents and brings the 'possible'...a bearer, here and now of rights, of values, of culture...It is our hiostorical responsibility not only to affirm this but the create cultural, social, political and educational contexts which are able to receive children and dialogue with their potential for constructing human rights. ~ Carlina Rinaldi

The new black conservatives claim that transfer payments to the black needy engender a mentality of dependence which undercuts the value of self-reliance and of the solidity of the black poor family. They fail to see that the welfare state was a historic compromise between progressive forces seeking broad subsistence rights and conservative forces arguing for unregulated markets. Therefore it should come as no surprise that the welfare state possesses many flaws. The reinforcing of 'dependent mentalities' and the unsettling of the family are two such flaws. But simply to point out these rather obvious shortcomings does not justify cutbacks in the welfare state. In the face of high black unemployment, these cutbacks will not promote self-reliance or strong black families but will only produce even more black cultural disorientation and more devastated black households. This is so because without jobs or incentives to be productive citizens the black poor become even more prone toward criminality, drugs, and alcoholism- the major immediate symptoms of the pervasive black communal and cultural chaos. ~ Cornel West

(Dune's Frank) Herbert made religion the inescapable instrument of cultural change. ~ Joseph Bottum

Apparently, there is no bad economic turn a conservative cannot do unto his buddy in the working class, as long as cultural solidarity has been cemented over a beer. ~ Thomas Frank

Tarot is a practice rich with history and cultural knowledge. It is a science of the mind. ~ Benebell Wen

I found my place when I moved to London, where I chose to live, making my own tribe who were all from different backgrounds and places. The class thing is very dominant there, but in the cultural cross-fertilization, I felt a sense of belonging. ~ Neneh Cherry

You can be many things if you are British and still belong. ~ Robert Hillman

When you say what is the difference between me and my stage name the idea is that as a musician you always think of yourself as inhabiting a certain cultural space in the kind of a cultural landscape, so when I say cultural space what I mean to imply there is that you exist within certain parameters of how people think of culture. ~ DJ Spooky

The international manager reconciles cultural dilemmas ~ Fons Trompenaars

We need to help students and parents cherish and preserve the ethnic and cultural diversity that nourishes and strengthens this community - and this nation. ~ Cesar Chavez

VanessaPlace Inc. is a trans-national corporation whose sole mission is to design and manufacture objects to meet the poetic needs of the human heart, face, and form. What is poetry really worth? What is poetry's purpose - personally, culturally, politically, financially? VanessaPlace offers a language-based solution to these and other dilemmas facing the culture business today. The poetry-products of VanessaPlace turn cultural capital into capitalized culture through a game-changing, dynamic shift of focus from manifesto to manifestation. ~ Vanessa Place

Cultural anthropology is more and more rapidly getting to realize itself as a strictly historical science. ~ Edward Sapir

People have always said since TV was invented what a cultural wasteland it is but I think it is the worst and the best. It is the golden age of television. ~ Joel McHale

Great marriages are made when husbands and wives don't allow cultural expectations to dictate their life decisions or their day-to-day interactions. A one-of-a-kind value system is forged, blended ~ Fawn Weaver

The elite, and those who work for them, were never taught how to question the assumptions of their age. The socially important knowledge and cultural ideas embodied in history, literature, philosophy, and religion, which are at their core subversive and threatening to authority, have been banished from public discourse. ~ Chris Hedges

Europe is equal to its historical task. Against the anti-spiritual, anti-heroic 'ideals' of America-Jewry, Europe pits its metaphysical ideas, its faith in its Destiny, its ethical principles, its heroism. Fearlessly, Europe falls in for battle, knowing it is armed with the mightiest weapon ever forged by History: the superpersonal Destiny of the European organism. Our European Mission is to create the Culture-State-Nation-Imperium of the West, and thereby we shall perform such deeds, accomplish such works, and so transform our world that our distant posterity, when they behold the remains of our buildings and ramparts, will tell their grandchildren that on the soil of Europe once dwelt a tribe of gods. ~ Francis Parker Yockey

Through my fiction, I seek to highlight the social and cultural rules that we accept without question. Sometimes, without even noticing. Fiction offers a unique platform to do this, with dystopia at the fore. By exaggerating these ingrained rules, or by reversing them entirely, we can start to examine them. And question them. And challenge those that are harmful. ~ Angeline Trevena

The modern computer with all its various gadgets and wonderful electronic facilities now makes it possible to preserve and reinvigorate all the cultural richness of mankind. ~ Alan Lomax

A racist notion found in neoshamanic circles is placing high value on indigenous wisdom but not on indigenous people. ~ S. Kelley Harrell

Most of our life is miscommunication, and when you add a language barrier to it, it just becomes total mayhem and confusion. It just adds to it with all of the cultural differences. It could be an American family meeting another American family and you could still have a total clash. With family, it's like visiting another planet. ~ Julie Delpy

We are not born women of color. We become women of color. In order to become women of color, we would need to become fluent in each others' histories, to resist and unlearn an impulse to claim first oppression, most-devastating oppression, one-of-a-kind oppression, defying comparison oppression. We would have to unlearn an impulse that allows mythologies about each other to replace knowing about one another. We would need to cultivate a way of knowing in which we direct our social, cultural, psychic, and spiritually marked attention on each other. We cannot afford to cease yearning for each others' company. ~ M. Jacqui Alexander

Different cultural and geological references inspire the collection as seen in ancient tribes and tradition, ~ Lubov Azria

The difference between a person who appreciates books, even loves them, and a collector is not only degrees of affection, I realized. For the former, the bookshelf is a kind of memoir; there are my childhood books, my college books, my favorite novels, my inexplicable choices. Many matchmaking and social networking websites offer a place for members to list what they're reading for just this reason: books can reveal a lot about a person. This is particularly true of the collector, for whom the bookshelf is a reflection not just of what he has read but profoundly of who he is: 'Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they can come alive in him; it is he who comes alive in them,' wrote cultural critic Walter Benjamin. ~ Allison Hoover Bartlett

To me, in retrospect, it was amazing that 'Seinfeld' was a show that had such mass appeal. At first it was a disaster in the ratings, but then it became a cultural phenomenon. I don't know if that's possible anymore, but I don't try for that. ~ Bill Lawrence

Standing outside the cultural hysteria the trend is fairly clear. It is a trend toward temporal compression and the emergence of ambiguity. ~ Terence McKenna

Rome was not the first state of organized gangsterdom, nor was it the last; but it was the only one that managed to bamboozle posterity into an almost universal admiration. Few rational men admire the Huns, the Nazis or the Soviets; but for centuries, schoolboys have been expected to read Julius Caesar's militaristic drivel ("We inflicted heavy losses upon the enemy, our own casualties being very light") and Cato's revolting incitements to war. They have been led to believe that the Romans had attained an advanced level in the sciences, the arts, law, architecture, engineering and everything else. It is my opinion that the alleged Roman achievements are largely a myth; and I feel it is time for this myth to be debunked a little. What the Romans excelled in was bullying, bludgeoning, butchering and blood baths. Like the Soviet Empire, the Roman Empire enslaved peoples whose cultural level was far above their own. They not only ruthlessly vandalized their countries, but they also looted them, stealing their art treasures, abducting their scientists and copying their technical know-how, which the Romans' barren society was rarely able to improve on. No wonder, then, that Rome was filled with great works of art. But the light of culture which Rome is supposed to have emanated was a borrowed light: borrowed from the Greeks and the other peoples that the Roman militarists had enslaved. ~ Petr Beckmann

What this committee needs, what this media center needs, is a good dose of Jeeves."
"I'm sorry," said Mr. Peabody, a mathematics lecturer who sat hunched at the far end of the table taking the minutes. "How do you spell that?"
"Is it possible," said Arthur, raising both his shoulders and his voice, "that we are working in a university where lecturers are not aware of the identity of one Reginald Jeeves, the gentleman's personal gentleman and the personal gentleman's gentleman? What has happened to cultural literacy, my fellow members of the Advisory Committee for the Media Center? This sort of ignorance is exactly what needs addressing. What I mean, Mr. Peabody, when I say that we need a dose of Jeeves, is that we need quiet and reasoned wisdom that leads to prompt and directed action. ~ Charlie Lovett

Kershaw had long ago realized, apparently, that dealing with Brits was tricky. You had to listen to what a Brit was saying - which was invariably that he thought XYZ was a terrific idea and he hoped it went very well for you - while at the same time paying heed to the greasy, nauseous suspicion you had that, although every word and phrase indicated approval, somehow the sum of the whole was that you'd have to be a mental pygmy to come up with this plan and a complete fucking idiot to pursue it. After six years working with the Brits in various theatres he'd come to the conclusion that they didn't do it on purpose. The thing was, Brits actually thought that subtext was plain text. To a Brit, the modern English language was vested with hundreds of years of unbroken history and cultural nuance, so that every single word had a host of implications depending on who said it to whom, when, and how. British soldiers, for example, gave entire reports to their commanders by the way they said 'good morning, sir' and then had to spend half an hour telling them the detail, which was why the Brits always looked bored in briefings. They could sense the trajectory of the conversation, knew the bad news was coming now and the good news now and that there was a question on the end which needed thinking about. With a bit of work they could deduce the question, too, but they always waited politely for it to be asked so that no one felt rushed. ~ Nick Harkaway

Must recognize that greater knowledge about Islam is not enough to alter people's perceptions of Muslims. Minds are not changed merely through acquiring data or information (if that were the case it would take no effort to convince Americans that Obama is, in fact, a Christian). Rather, it is solely through the slow and steady building of personal relationships that one discovers the fundamental truth that all people everywhere have the same dreams and aspirations, that all people struggle with the same fears and anxieties. Of course, such a process takes time. It may take another generation or so for this era of anti-Muslim frenzy to be looked back upon with the same shame and derision with which the current generation views the anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish hysterics of the past. But that day will no doubt come. Perhaps then we will recognize the intimate connections that bind us all together beyond any cultural, ethnic, or religious affiliations. Inshallah. God willing. ~ Reza Aslan

There is an odd assumption that compassion and care are finite or that critics can be everything to everyone - commenting on everything simply because they can. That's not what cultural criticism is. ~ Roxane Gay

In 1952, Muddy cut the song 'Rollin' Stone.' It was a nationwide success, and the song echoes down through rock n' roll history. Bob Dylan cut a tribute by the same name, an English band decided to call themselves the Rolling Stones, and the magazine that first embraced music as a serious cultural phenomenon was itself called 'Rolling Stone.' ~ Tim Cahill