Culture Quotes

"We're so afraid of death in our culture, but I think if we understand it better, then we'll appreciate the life we have more"

Naomi Watts, Actress

"The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization"

Fredric Jameson, Critic

"Often, these downplay the power of cultural imperialism - in that sense, playing the game of US interests - by reassuring us that the global success of American mass culture is not as bad as all that"

Fredric Jameson, Critic

"Everybody gets too drunk sometimes; and even if everybody didn't, I have gotten too drunk sometimes. I haven't hurt anybody. In Ireland we drink a lot. It's part of our culture. I like drinking. I don't think it's a bad thing"

Andrea Corr, Musician

"I feel like being into the beat of your own drum has become too prominent in the culture"

Mos Def, Musician

"Russia is a part of European culture. Therefore, it is with difficulty that I imagine NATO as an enemy"

Vladimir Putin, President

"Because the stuff that they feed kids now, they'll have a bunch of idiots in the next millennium as far as art and culture is concerned"

Billy Higgins, Musician

"When I go to Japan and do shows I play for 1,000 to 1,500 people. I like a lot about Japan. Their popular culture and mass commercialization appeals to me"

Matthew Sweet, Musician

"What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression"

Roy Ayers, Musician

"I'm interested in youth culture and popular culture"

Marc Newson, Designer

"If education, culture, the higher life were shining things to be worshiped from afar, he had still a means left whereby he could draw one step nearer to them"

Mary Antin, Activist

"I wonder what it means about American literary culture and its transmission when I consider the number of American poets who earn their living teaching creative writing in universities. I've ended up doing that myself"

Marilyn Hacker, Poet

"Having had that experience... I think, what modern culture wants to see is the relationship with the woman. I don't think you can tell a story on film nowadays where the woman simply is there for the man when he decides to settle down"

Tom Selleck, Actor

"Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years it's a name that the streets taught me a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment and I feel I've done quite a bit with that name and it's time to expand and move on"

Mos Def, Musician

"Hip Hop is thee dominant youth culture in the world right now"

Kurtis Blow, Musician

"At first, we couldn't be establishment, because we didn't have any money. We were guerrilla marketers, and we still are, a little bit. But, as we became No. 1 in our industry, we've had to modify our culture and become a bit more planned"

Phil Knight, Businessman

"The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes"

Salman Rushdie, Novelist

"I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning"

Jonathan Coe, Novelist

"I believe in mythology. I guess I share Joseph Campbell's notion that a culture or society without mythology would die, and we're close to that"

Robert Redford, Actor

"With faith and courage, generations of Armenians have overcome great suffering and proudly preserved their culture, traditions, and religion and have told the story of the genocide to an often indifferent world"

Jerry Costello, Politician

"We need more theatres, more art and more culture in this country"

Richard Briers, Actor

"Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world"

Matthew Arnold, Poet

"Well, news is anything that's interesting, that relates to what's happening in the world, what's happening in areas of the culture that would be of interest to your audience"

Kurt Loder, Journalist

"I think you learn a lot about a country from its art. To me, it's part of the drama of life. It teaches you that there are places, moments and incidents in other cultures that genuinely have a life of their own"

Michael Palin, Comedian

"All the culture war issues will be settled by the court"

Gary Bauer, Public Servant

"Culture is properly described as the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection"

Matthew Arnold, Poet

"In this present culture, we need to find the means to work and live together with less aggression if we are to resolve the serious problems that afflict and impede us"

Margaret J. Wheatley, Writer

"But the idea that women can't take care of themselves still permeates our culture"

Katherine Dunn, Novelist

"You have to work at creating your own culture"

Mitch Albom, Writer

"You have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it"

Mitch Albom, Writer

"There are things in American culture that want to wipe the class distinction. Blue jeans. Ready-made clothes. Coca-Cola"

Leslie Fiedler, Critic

"Musicians from the beginning of time have been there to express the mood and the musical feelings in the air for whatever's going on in that particular culture. It's the greatest joy as a musician to be able to translate that, be part of something and watch the scenery around you"

Trey Anastasio, Musician

"The writer crafts their ideal world. In my world, everyone has really long conversations or just picks apart pop culture to death and everyone talks in monologue"

Kevin Smith, Director

"Culture is a little like dropping an Alka-Seltzer into a glass - you don't see it, but somehow it does something"

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Author

"If you keep up with pop culture, everybody knows the joke"

Shawn Wayans, Actor

"I think pot should be legalized, but I think the promotion of party culture is irresponsible"

Krist Novoselic, Musician

"Our culture is in moral chaos. On TV we celebrate freaks instead of honest, decent people"

Kathie Lee Gifford, Entertainer

"I think it'd be useful for parents to know kind of what is the culture of an institution"

Margaret Spellings, Public Servant

"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing culture in our land"

Mao Zedong, Leader

"I have observed, too, that the people of the many countries that I have visited are showing an ever increasing interest in the classical and traditional music of their own cultures"

George Crumb, Composer

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