Edward T Hall Culture Quotes

It is never possible to understand completely any other human being; and no individual will ever really understand himself - the complexity is too great and there is not the time to constantly take things apart and examine them. ~ Edward T. Hall

For him to have understood me would have meant reorganizing his thinking ... giving up his intellectual ballast, and few people are willing to risk such a radical move. ~ Edward T. Hall

The exciting thing about mathematics and science and music and literature is what they can tell us about the workings of the human mind. For these disciplines are literally models (extensions) of at least certain parts of the mind. Just as the knife cuts but does not chew, while the lens does only a portion of what the eye can do, extensions are reductionist in their capability. No matter how hard it tries, the human race can never fully replace what was left out of extensions in the first place. Also, it is just as important to know what is left out of a given extension system as it is to know what the system will do. Yet the extension-omissions side is frequently overlooked. ~ Edward T. Hall

Two points that are very important points to remember and ask: Is it real and does it work? ~ Edward T. Hall

The reason man does not experience his true cultural self is that until he experiences another self as valid he has little basis for validating his own self. ~ Edward T. Hall

The essence of cross-cultural communication has more to do with releasing responses than with sending messages. It is more important to release the right response than to send the right message. ~ Edward T. Hall

The best reason for exposing oneself to foreign ways is to generate a sense of vitality and awareness - an interest in life which can come only when one lives through the shock of contrast and difference. ~ Edward T. Hall

When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brainthat is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious
to get rid of boundaries, not to create them. ~ Edward T. Hall

By their very nature bureaucracies have no conscience, no memory, and no mind. ~ Edward T. Hall

The future for us is the foreseeable future. The South Asian, however, feels that it is perfectly realistic to think of a 'long time' in terms of thousands of years. ~ Edward T. Hall

Now, you can't tell me, we have the only God in the whole world. You can't tell me that nobody else has God. ~ Edward T. Hall

Man is used to the fact that there are languages which he does not at first understand and which must be learned, but because art is primarily visual he expects that he should get the message immediately and is apt to be affronted if he doesn't. ~ Edward T. Hall

Viewing movies in very slow motion, looking for synchrony, one realizes that what we know as dance is really a slowed-down, stylized version of what human beings do whenever they interact. ~ Edward T. Hall

I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. ~ Edward T. Hall

Behind every piece of paper lies a human situation. ~ Edward T. Hall

Shame is the deep sense that you are unacceptable because of something you did, something done to you, or something associated with you. You feel exposed and humiliated. Or, to strengthen the language, You are disgraced because you acted less than human, you were treated as if you were less than human, or you were associated with something less than human, and there are witnesses. ~ Edward T. Welch

Shame lives in the community, though the community can feel like a courtroom. It says, "You don't belong - you are unacceptable, unclean, and disgraced" because "You are wrong, you have sinned" (guilt), or "Wrong has been done to you" or "You are associated with those who are disgraced or outcast." The shamed person feels worthless, expects rejection, and needs cleansing, fellowship, love, and acceptance. ~ Edward T. Welch

The number one way culture is shaped is by what leaders model. ~ Mindy Hall

The more you read Scripture, the more you actually talk to God rather than think about fear. ~ Edward T. Welch

Joy is not the opposite of suffering. If it were, a person practiced in joy could crowd out pain because one couldn't exist with the other. Instead, joy can actually be a companion to suffering. ~ Edward T. Welch

I had no songs in my repertoire for commercial radio anyway. Songs about debauched bootleggers, mothers that drowned their own children, Cadillacs that only got five miles to the gallon, floods, union hall fires, darkness and cadavers at the bottom of rivers weren't for radiophiles. There was nothing easygoing about the folk songs I sang. They weren't friendly or ripe with mellowness. They didn't come gently to the shore. I guess you could say they weren't commercial.

Not only that, my style was too erratic and hard to pigeonhole for the radio, and songs, to me, were more important that just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality, some different republic, some liberated republic. Greil Marcus, the music historian, would some thirty years later call it "the invisible republic."

Whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambitions to stir things up. i just thought of popular culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk on it.

I didn't know what age of history we were in nor what the truth of it was. Nobody bothered with that. If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that's still well and good. Folk songs taught me that. ~ Bob Dylan

On earth, however, God doesn't prescribe a happy life. Look at some of the Psalms. They are written by people of great faith, yet they run the emotional gamut. One even ends with "darkness is my closest friend" (Ps. 88:18). When your emotions feel muted or always low, when you are unable to experience the highs and lows you once did, the important question is not "How can I figure out what I have done wrong?" but it is, "Where do I turn - or, to whom do I turn - when I am depressed? ~ Edward T. Welch

Though the cross and everything leading up to it violate our sensibilities and we are rightly aghast, the reality is that human beings have never liked God very much. At the cross, the nature of God was most fully revealed. As a result, human contempt was also most fully revealed and brought to a laser-like focus and intensity. ~ Edward T. Welch

Don't let religious-sounding reluctance fool you. When you plead "unworthy" and refuse to be served by God, you place your judgment about yourself above God's. You say you would prefer to go it alone, and you imply that your unworthiness goes beyond the scope of God's mercy and grace. You must think that God cleanses you only from ordinary sins, not from the spectacular ones. ~ Edward T. Welch

He may not see the King's antique apparel on kids in the Hall, but he does feel a tinge of nostalgia. The amount of teens wearing the Led Zeppelin '77 tour T-shirts walking around the Rock Hall is absurd. Absurd, ... I saw them on that tour and didn't even buy a shirt. It tells you what these kids feel about music. People take music very seriously. ~ Howard Kremer

It is one thing to die. It is another thing for an innocent person to die for a guilty one. It is something much more that Jesus would take on himself all the curses the world deserved in concentrated form. This meant that his relationship with his Father, the one thing that had sustained him throughout all the previous insults and rejection, was about to be removed. Moses knew he could not lead the people through the wilderness unless God was present. Without his Father's grace and mercy, Jesus had to wonder if he would be able to take one more step, let alone make it all the way to the cross. So he prayed. The result was that he was strengthened. His mission came into full view (John 18:11), and he was able to see the divine plan to the end. From that point on, the gospel accounts communicate two unmistakable points. They press these points until we are undone by them: Jesus experienced incomparable shame, and he experienced it at the hands of everyone. ~ Edward T. Welch

They proved that it was possible to produce beauty in life by surrounding life with
beauty. They discovered that symmetrical bodies were built by souls continuously in the presence of
symmetrical bodies; that noble thoughts were produced by minds surrounded by examples of mental
nobility. Conversely, if a man were forced to look upon an ignoble or asymmetrical structure it would
arouse within him a sense of ignobility which would provoke him to commit ignoble deeds. If an illproportioned building were erected in the midst of a city there would be ill-proportioned children born in
that community; and men and women, gazing upon the asymmetrical structure, would live inharmonious
lives. Thoughtful men of antiquity realized that their great philosophers were the natural products of the
aesthetic ideals of architecture, music, and art established as the standards of the cultural systems of the time. ~ Manly P. Hall

Creation sleeps! 'T is as the general pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause,- An awful pause! prophetic of her end. ~ Edward Young

Even if medication relieves some of the burden of depression, it may be functioning like aspirin. That is, it takes away some of the symptoms but the root problems persist. ~ Edward T. Welch

When it comes to addictions, we tend to divide humanity into two groups: those who are prone toward addictions and those who aren't. The reality, of course, is very different. All human beings have already fallen into sin. ~ Edward T. Welch

Suffering nags us with questions about God in a way that comfort never could. ~ Edward T. Welch

There is a mean streak to authentic self-control. Underneath what seems to be the placid demeanor of those who are not ruled by their desires is the heart of a warrior. Self control is not for the timid. When we want to grow in it, not only do we nurture an exuberance for Jesus Christ, we also demand of ourselves a hatred for sin. ~ Edward T. Welch

. . .poetry by Eliot. There's a lulling thing in his voice that makes me feel as if a spell has been cast that shall wake us all so that we might fly out of the mirror and speak to each other clearly at last. ~ Louisa Hall

All it takes is a tradition of demeaning, critical words from the right person. All it takes is nothing from the right person. No interest in you, no words spoken to you, no love. If you are treated as if you do not exist, you will feel shame. ~ Edward T. Welch

What is the way out of shame?
It is the way of humility, not humiliation. It is the way of being known, not exposed. ~ Edward T. Welch

If you know you have been forgiven, you will forgive and reconcile with others. ~ Edward T. Welch

Mad? Is one who has solved the secret of life to be considered mad? ~ Edward T. Lowe, Jr.

It occurred to me that my cheek was probably right over his tattoo. Without thinking, I lifted my face and tugged at the neckline of his T-shirt. This time, the stark black-and-gold mark wasn't hidden. No need for that spell anymore, I guess. Still, I covered it with my palm. Archer's hands clutched reflexively on my waist. Our eyes met. "It doesn't burn this time," I whispered.
His breathing was ragged. "Beg to differ, Mercer. ~ Rachel Hawkins

Friends are the best helpers. They come prepackaged with compassion and love. All they need is wisdom, and that is available to everyone. ~ Edward T. Welch

The gospel is only available to people who know they are unclean. ~ Edward T. Welch

To paraphrase Augustine, if you want to know your God-given gifts, first know that the purpose of spiritual gifts is to bring unity to the church. Then "love God and do what you feel like doing." But there is more to the unleashing of gifts in the body. One of the bad fruits of an "I" church is that we don't tell people when they bless us. If someone has taught Sunday school and helped us understand a passage of Scripture, then we should tell the person and encourage his or her gift. If worship leaders left us rejoicing that we have been with God's people in his presence, then thank them for the specific ways they blessed you and the church. No one should have to ask what their gifts are; we should tell people their gifts as they minister to us. Can ~ Edward T. Welch

Make your melodies simple enough so that the average person can hum them. ~ Tom T. Hall

Work"


I laid telephone line, then cable when it came along. I pulled T-shirts off a silk-screen press. I cleaned offices in buildings thirty-five floors high. I filed the metal edges of grease fryers hot off a welding line. I humped sod in townhouse complexes, and when it became grass I cut it. I sorted mail. I washed police cars, and then I changed their oil. I installed remotes on gas meters so a truck could simply drive down the street and get the readings. I set posts and put up fences, wood and chain link. Five a.m. at the racetrack, I walked hot horses after their exercise. I bathed them. I mopped and swept aisles in a grocery store. Eventually, I stocked shelves. I corrected errors on mortgage papers for a bank. I racked tables in a pool hall. There's more I'm not telling you.

All of this befell me as an adult. As a kid, I cut neighbors' lawns and delivered newspapers, and I watched after little kids while their parents worked. I painted houses. I collected frogs from ponds and sold them to pet stores. And so on.

At fifteen, I went for a busboy position at an all-night diner, but they told me to come back when I turned sixteen. I did.

Sometimes, on top of one, I took a second job. It gave me just enough time to sleep between the two. And eat.

My father worked, harder than I did, and then he died. Then I worked harder. My mother said, "You're the man of the house now." I was seventeen. She kept an eye on me, t ~ Michael Stigman

Be wise to-day; 't is madness to defer. ~ Edward Young