Youth Culture Quotes

Hip-hop, this thing we love that loves us back, is our lingua franca. ~ Raquel Cepeda

I was walking down a street and after his death and saw a billboard on the side of a brick wall for Van's shoes. It was a picture of Hopper's face, and all it said was, 'Hopper Lives.' So I think he's still part of youth culture. There are lessons to be learned from Hopper about being a young person who wants to live the art life in America. ~ Tom Folsom

Whiteness is not a culture. There is Irish culture and Italian culture and American culture - the latter, as Albert Murray pointed out, a mixture of the Yankee, the Indian, and the Negro (with a pinch of ethnic salt); there is youth culture and drug culture and queer culture; but there is no such thing as white culture. Whiteness has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with social position. It is nothing but a reflection of privilege, and exists for no reason other than to defend it. Without the privileges attached to it, the white race would not exist, and the white skin would have no more social significance than big feet. ~ Noel Ignatiev

People are really interested in the concept of eternal youth in this plastic-surgery culture. ~ Charlaine Harris

Brands targeting Gen Z need to look beyond the confines of traditional segmentation, the ultimate priority always has to be on alignment that helps us cultivate relationships with youth culture - not just organize it. ~ Gregg L. Witt

Dress codes and gestures and attitudes have always inspired me, as has youth culture in general, although now I question it more. If you analyze youth cultures over history, there has always been something strict about them - you have to be like this or like that. ~ Raf Simons

Our body does get old, but our spirit, never. If we write well enough, we might even live forever. ~ A.A. Patawaran

Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates ... Instead, they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service, should learn to think and act as a mass. ~ Ernesto Che Guevara

Appeal with respect to elderly people as you would to the members of your own family. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I'm here to tell niggas it ain't all swell.
There's Heaven then there's Hell niggas
One day your cruisin' in your seven,
Next day your sweatin', forgettin' your lies,
Alibis ain't matchin' up, bullshit catchin' up
Hit with the RICO, they repoed your vehicle
Everything was all good just a week ago
'Bout to start bitchin' ain't you?
Ready to start snitchin' ain't you?
I forgive you. Weak ass, hustlin' just ain't you
Aside from the fast cars
Honeys that shake they ass in bars
You know you wouldn't be involved
With the Underworld dealers, carriers of mac-millers
East coast bodiers, West coast cap-peelers
Little monkey niggas turned gorillas. ~ Jay-Z

So I get all the references and I totally get the humor and it's really fun. This - it's kind of a mash up of so many different genres and things that kind of, sort of are just part of youth culture right now. Music and action and video games, and it's kind of amazing to see it all piled into one film. ~ Mary Elizabeth Winstead

The Beatles' story is all of our stories. It is about how the youth culture emerged, the drug culture emerged, how politics rose to the fore as a universal debate. It's about rebellion, it's about the growth of the British entertainment system, the growth of the rock n' roll entertainment system. ~ Bob Spitz

Every place has its own punk flavor, but they all borrowed ideas from SoCal. It's still a vibrant scene creeping into every crevasse of youth culture. When you hear grunge, you think of the '90s, but when you hear L.A. punk, it's timeless. ~ Greg Graffin

I think it's even harder because I think as always, Hollywood is sort of glamour central for the world, and the entire world looks to it for not only entertainment, but the whole idea of the youth factor and youth being sold to our culture via young actors and actresses. ~ Anthony Michael Hall

The things that I draw on, and the world that I feel part of, aren't particularly youth culture. ~ Robert Wyatt

Do not speak harshly to a grown-up man. He is old enough to be your father. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Relevance is a big, big question. It's more about what's your definition of being relevant. In the music world, agism is a big issue. It's about youth and youth culture. There's no other art form that I know that requires you to be a certain age. ~ Larry Mullen, Jr.

Through my youth, there was imposed on us a culture relentlessly English. English books were all you could buy; English television filled our screens, and in consequence, England seemed to matter in a way that our world didn't. ~ Richard Flanagan

All of youth culture is packaged and sold back to us at this furious rate these days. I think it's part and parcel to this corporate encroachment on our lives in general. ~ Ani DiFranco

Young Americans today are no more learned or skilful than their predecessors, no more knowledgeable, fluent, up-to-date, or inquisitive, except in the materials of youth culture. ~ Mark Bauerlein

Ours is a youth culture, and like a golf tournament, we honor only low scores. ~ Bill Cosby

Women not only bear the brunt of the equation of beauty with youth, we perpetuate it - every time we dye our hair to cover the gray or lie about our age, not to mention have plastic surgery to cover the signs of aging. ~ Ashton Applewhite

Our society on a whole is trained to see young women. There are proportionally far more of them on magazine covers, on TV, and in films than int the actual population. As a result, we have a citizenry taught to see the young and ignore the not-so-young. It isn't conscious; it's Pavlovian. (13) ~ Victoria Moran

As a culture, we are not comfortable with mortality. We do not accept it the way other cultures do. We cling to youth, and we don't want to die. It's like, 'Well, too bad, we do.' ~ Alan Ball

With actors, all our ages are out there for all to see - you can't hide anything, really. And it's kind of a relief. This is my age, this is what I look like without makeup on - who cares? That youth culture - that lying about your age - it's all denial of death anyway. ~ Julianne Moore

Dick Clark's 'American Bandstand' spread the gospel of American pop music and teenage style that transcended the regional boundaries of our country and united a youth culture that eventually spread its message throughout the entire world. ~ John Oates

Listen, you know this: If there's not a rebellious youth culture, there's no culture at all. It's absolutely essential. It is the future. This is what we're supposed to do as a species, is advance ideas. ~ John Lydon

Politics is clearly a not so happening topic in our young blood. I could clearly see many students yawning. Some might have been discussing the new Shakira video amongst themselves, the one shown on MTV these days. Bloody donkeys, if it was a porno movie featuring an interracial orgy, their eyes might have ogled out and ears might have become sensitive to the oohs and aahs but not for causes of the nation. Hrmpf ... youth power indeed! ~ Faraaz Kazi

Concurrently, the growing class power and public voice of conservative and liberal well-to-do black folks easily obscures the class cruelty these individuals enact both in the way they talk about underprivileged blacks and the way they represent them. The existence of that class cruelty and its fascist dimensions have been somewhat highlighted by the efforts of privileged-class blacks to censor the voices of black youth, particularly gangsta rappers who are opposing bourgeois class values by extolling the values of street culture and street vernacular. Significantly, the attack on urban underclass black youth culture and its gangster dimensions (glamorization of crime, etc.) is usually presented via a critique of sexism. Since most privileged-class blacks have shown no interest in advancing feminist politics, the only organized effort to end sexism and sexist oppression, this attack on sexism seems merely gratuitous, a smoke screen that deflects away from the fact that what really disturbs bourgeois folks is the support of rebellion, unruly behavior, and disrespect for their class values. In reality, they and their white counterparts fear the power these young folks have to change the minds and life choices of youth from privileged classes. If only underclass black folks were listening to gangsta rap, there would be no public effort to silence and censor this music. The fear is that it will generate class rebellion. ~ Bell Hooks

To her audience, Janis Joplin has remained a symbol, artifact and reminder of late Sixties youth culture. Her popularity never derived from her musical ability, but from her capacity to link her fantasies of freedom and immortality with ours. ~ Jon Landau

I would say there's always a movement of music and fashion in youth culture - every decade inspires the new one. ~ Maripol

There is not a single person I have met in my lifetime who is comfortable talking about death. It's the biggest downside to our youth-centric culture. Death is a bummer, so let's not talk about it. Let's hide it away and hope it never strikes close to home. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

1962 to 1965, where suddenly the guitar became this icon of youth culture all over the world, thanks mostly to the Beatles. Add to that, that I saw A Hard Day's Night 12 or 13 times, and that the guitar was the one instrument that my parents absolutely refused to let in the house. So you add it up and see that irresistible forces led me to the guitar. ~ Pat Metheny

I was so tired of this ceaseless, day-to-day tug-of-war between my hormones and my head, my vanity and my virtue. I felt very much as though I were caught in the middle of some dreadful battle in which taking a side of my own would mean certain misery in either case. ~ Emily Tomko

When my daughter left for college, I lost my in-house consultant to youth culture. There's just stuff I don't get. And there's something kind of pathetic about someone my age trying to pretend she gets it, so I don't try to pretend. ~ Emily Yoffe

I'm not a big crime reader, but I'm reading Michael Connelly's 'The Reversal.' I'm going back to his novels. I'm also reading Keith Richards' 'Life.' I'm always fascinated by the transition from the innocent late '60s and early '70s and the youth culture becoming an industry. ~ Jo Nesbo

Rag Tags, you see, are absolutely free to do as they please, which for the most part is to imitate each other. And you only have to take a closer look at most youth culture groups to verify that. Mods and rockers, skinheads and greasers, teddy boys, suadeheads, chavs, emos, goths etc. all fear that by being different they'll be left out in the cold. That's why they're Rag Tags ~ Karl Wiggins

Hip Hop is thee dominant youth culture in the world right now. ~ Kurtis Blow

I'm interested in youth culture and popular culture. ~ Marc Newson

Since the 1960s, mainstream media has searched out and co-opted the most authentic things it could find in youth culture, whether that was psychedelic culture, anti-war culture, blue jeans culture. Eventually heavy metal culture, rap culture, electronica - they'll look for it and then market it back to kids at the mall. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

Teenagers, especially girl ones, seem like the perfect canary-in-the-coal-mine characters to me. They capture American culture and its perversion, its hypocrisy - how absorbed we are with youth and beauty and sexualized imagery, for instance, while preaching abstinence and modesty. ~ Antonya Nelson

Yes, it's important to inspire the next generation but let's not forget to inspire the now generation too. ~ Onyi Anyado

Youth culture is constantly evolving and Gen Z in particular is disrupting industries, says Witt. Gen Z represents an unprecedented group of innovation and entrepreneurship. This group is focused on niche interests and if brands don't recognize this now and get on board, they are going to be left behind. It's also important for brands to adopt a global mindset, as some of the most significant growth is taking place in countries that are either developing or underdeveloped. ~ Gregg L. Witt

There is no more effective way to radicalize American Muslim youth than for political leaders to make public displays of prejudice against all Muslims. Suspicion will undermine their sense of identification with America and alienate some from both the culture and from politics. ~ Miroslav Volf

Now I am old-fashioned. A woman, I consider, should be womanly. I have no patience with the modern neurotic girl who jazzes from morning to night, smokes like a chimney, and uses language which would make a billingsgate fishwoman blush! ~ Agatha Christie

There is genuine Hip Hop; a message that connects, rocks a crowd, and motivates a people and then there is what is left ... instead of Hip Hop we have Hip replacement. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Body piercing and baggy clothes express identity among black youth, and not just beginning with hip-hop culture. Moreover, young black entrepreneurs like Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs and Russell Simmons have made millions from their clothing lines. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

Youth culture now really looks back and embraces the past, but keeps it contemporary but not sticking to one particular style. ~ Alexander McQueen

I think there was a long period of time when we got real invested in a youth culture, and not coincidentally it was when the baby boomers, who let's face it, take up a lot of space on the planet, were young. ~ Anna Quindlen

The youth of Idaho falls should be encouraged to take drugs in order to cope up with the fact that there is plutonium in their drinking water. ~ Bill Bryson

Race is the San Andreas Fault of our culture as well as our history. Its fissures are forever present and not that far beneath the surface of every day life. To deny that is to risk being labeled delusional. ~ Mike Barnicle

They fell in love the way you do the first time, when you're young, and you feel as if you have nothing and everything to lose ~ Rainbow Rowell

A culture that doesn't respect half its population will never prosper. ~ Wafa Sultan

My parents kept the best aspects of the Asian culture, and they Americanized the family. My mother was a great example for me. She was a working mother with a good career. ~ Andrea Jung

The evolution of cultures appears to follow the pattern of the evolution of species. The many different forms of culture which arise correspond to the "mutations" of genetic theory. Some forms prove to be effective under prevailing circumstances and others not, and the perpetuation of the culture is determined accordingly. ~ B.F. Skinner

The French: a people who have used their sophisticated culture and beautiful language to bequeath to the world the sliced potato. ~ Bauvard

I was a Catholic youth minister for eight years ... I'm not Catholic anymore. The church is too misogynistic. ~ Cindy Sheehan

If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? ~ Henry David Thoreau

Christians obscured the good news by their efforts to restore morality to the broader culture? ~ Philip Yancey

A smart city is an intelligent town that provides enormous possibilities for human growth through art, culture, social, architectural, economic, political, environmental, and scientific flowering with the optimal mix of nature, technology, humanity, and arts. ~ Amit Ray

When I made 'Who Needs Pictures,' my first album, I had been west of the Mississippi River one time in my life, and that was in fourth grade. We traveled to California for vacation and stayed with some friends of my parents. It was culture shock, and it was different. ~ Brad Paisley

We are so accustomed to classifying judgments, arguments and deeds in terms of morality that we forget how relatively new the notion was in the culture of the Enlightenment. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Together with the patient, a therapist looks at the nature of the pain. Often, the therapist can uncover causes of suffering that stem from the way the patient looks at things, the beliefs he holds about himself, his culture, and the world. The therapist examines these viewpoints and beliefs with the patient, and together they help free him from the kind of prison he has been in. But the patient's efforts are crucial. A teacher has to give birth to the teacher within his student, and a psychotherapist has to give birth to the psychotherapist within his patient. The patient's "internal psychotherapist" can then work full-time in a very effective way. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

When you go visiting countries, you start reading the history of the place and you start getting into the culture, and then you have to leave. In my experience, all countries have hidden treasures. ~ Jo Nesbo

Anti-Semitism is not based on strictly religious grounds and is not directed against the Jewish faith as such. However, all German Christians resent and denounce the fact that the Jews have been the chief advocates of atheism. They have influenced the workers' children through the Communist youth organizations, of which they are the leading spirit ... ~ Ernst Hanfstaengl

We are different personality types with different needs and motivations. In our culture, different is scary. Extroverts have laid claim on the definition of normal, leaving introverts to feel guilty for not fitting in. While ~ Michaela Chung

I am up against the system, the whole method & approach of a system of education which makes us morons, cultural morons, but efficient clerks for all your business and administrative offices. This education had reduced us to a nation of morons; we were strangers to our own culture and camp followers of another culture, feeding on leavings & garbage ... ~ R.K. Narayan

॥दोहा॥
श्रीगुरु चरन सरोज रज, निज मनु मुकुरु सुधारि।
बरनउँ रघुबर बिमल जसु, जो दायकु फल चारि॥

Doha
With the dust of guru's lotus feet having,
I cleanse the mirror of my soul sparkling,
Raghuvar's spotless glory I be singing,
The four fruits of life it ever is giving.
- 303 - ~ Munindra Misra

Popular culture is a wonderful buffet to dine at. But it's easy to overeat. ~ Benyamin Cohen

So when I went to school, I studied a Jordanian curriculum. We never studied anything about Palestine or its history. We never saw a Palestinian map. We studied the history of Jordan, of China, of Germany, of England - I remember learning about all the families who ruled England - but nothing connected to our history, nothing connected to our geography, nothing connected to our culture. ~ Cate Malek

If we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green. If we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don't deserve to survive, and probably won t. ~ William Faulkner

We do not have a few "rotten apples"; we have a rotten-apple barrel and a pervasive culture of corruption. ~ Thomas J. Gradel

There is more to the human mind than its evolutionary heritage. ~ Kenan Malik

For better of for worse the church in the West bought modernity's claims. We were baptized in its story (even though it said it did not have one) and accepted its categories and definitions. But somewhere along the way we also began to believe that the ways in which we accessed knowledge about God or Jesus or the Spirit or Christianity were those things themselves. ~ Tim Keel

Instead, I practiced different forms of reading. The possibilities offered by books are legion. The solitary relationship of a reader with his or her books breaks into dozens of further relationships: with friends upon whom we urge the books we like, with booksellers (the few who have survived in the Age of Supermarkets) who suggest new titles, with strangers for whom we might compile an anthology. As we read and reread over the years, these activities multiply and echo one another. A book we loved in our youth is suddenly recalled by someone to whom it was long ago recommended, the reissue of a book we thought forgotten makes it again new to our eyes, a story read in one context becomes a different story under a different cover. Books enjoy this modest kind of immortality. ~ Alberto Manguel

What is stronger in us - passion or habit? Or are all the violent impulses, all the whirl of our desires and turbulent passions, only the consequence of our ardent age, and is it only through youth that they seem deep and shattering? ~ Nikolai Gogol

Fools – in other words most people – imagine that it would be a wonderful achievement to be able to recover our youth; but those who know life are aware how little it would profit us. ("A Woman's Vengeance") ~ Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

External explanations of black-white differences - discrimination or poverty, for example - seem to many to be more amenable to public policy than internal explanations such as culture. Those with this point of view tend to resist cultural explanations but there is yet another reason why some resist understanding the counterproductive effects of an anachronistic culture: Alternative explanations of economic and social lags provide a more satisfying ability to blame all such lags on the sins of others, such as racism or discrimination. Equally important, such external explanations require no painful internal changes in the black population but leave all changes to whites, who are seen as needing to be harangued, threatened, or otherwise forced to change.
In short, prevailing explanations provide an alibi for those who lag - and an alibi is for many an enormously valuable asset that they are unlikely to give up easily. ~ Thomas Sowell

What saddens me is the corruption of youth and beauty, and the loss of soul, which is only replaced by money. ~ Lisa Bonet

And just as he had earlier, during their lunch hour, insinuated the problem of innocence to the formalists - which had incensed them and boosted their immaturity a hundredfold - he was now making an issue of my modern legs. And there I was, listening and lapping it all up - his linking the calves of my legs with those of the new generation - and coming to feel the cruelty of youth toward old calves! And there was also a kind of leg camaraderie with the schoolgirl, plus a clandestine, voluptuous collusion of legs, plus leg patriotism, plus the impudence of young legs, plus leg poetry, plus young-blooded pride in the calf of the leg, and a cult of the calf of the leg. Oh, what a fiendish body part! ~ Witold Gombrowicz

I shall be told by the zealots of the sect of regulation that this may be true, and may be safely committed to the convention of the farmer and the labourer, when the latter is in the prime of his youth, and at the time of his health and vigour, and in ordinary times of abundance. But in calamitous seasons, under accidental illness, in declining life, and with the pressure of a numerous offspring, the future nourishers of the community but the present drains and blood-suckers of those who produce them, what is to be done? [Thoughts and Details on Scarcity] ~ Edmund Burke

Nations as well as men require time to learn, whatever may be their intelligence or zeal. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Some kind of philosophy undergirds every movie, commercial, lecture, or book. Everything we take into our minds is trying to teach us something about how we should think the world is. (Life Hacks, p.83) ~ Jon Morrison

Events. Events in response to other events. Think about it. Nothing since the big bang has happened without a reason. And even the big bang might have come from something, because of something. One thing makes another thing, and then that thing makes the next thing. Look at these kids. These two brothers, still kids. They don't know themselves yet. They are acting in response, in reaction, passionate reaction to something that set them off, made them commit to violence. They would not be here if the United States had not invaded Iraq in 2003. The United States would not have had fertile ground for the lie it told about Irag, weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein, etc., etc., if not for Osama bin Laden and 9/11. Osama bin Laden would not have been able to recruit those men to learn how to fly planes and then crash them into buildings if not for propaganda about the persecution of the global Muslims, Afghanistan after the Russian invasion, Chechnya in the nineties, Bosnian genocides, or any instance of Islam under attack by the West, one culture trying to extinguish another. History is always a story of cause and effect. ~ Laleh Khadivi

Somehow something has gone wrong with poetry in our culture. We have lost touch with its purpose and value, and in doing so, we have lost contact with essential aspects of our own emotional and spiritual lives. ~ Gregory Orr

I tried to get into the National Youth Theatre and didn't, and I tried to get into drama school and didn't, and then I went to university and was really delighted that I went there. I think having the word 'no' can be quite creative. ~ Tamsin Greig

The weekly cartoons, as were my plays, came from a sense of criticism, criticism of the times, critical of the culture, of our manners and attitudes towards each other. The children's books come from the reverse. They're more supportive, since we're living in a time where we talk more about kids and do less, we talk about balancing the budget and we do it by cutting education. ~ Jules Feiffer

I find it easier to claim that I am friends with a monkey rather than with a man. ~ Shahla Khan