Culture Quotes

"The more English is heard in the world, the more gratifying it seems to speak French, and above all to know the culture of our country. They find a kind of French social grace in the language and culture"

Bernard Pivot, Journalist

"Race wasn't an issue. My family was French, but Yorkville was a melting pot of races and cultures"

Bob Cousy, Athlete

"How you act, walk, look and talk is all part of Hip Hop culture. And the music is colorless. Hip Hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red and white"

Afrika Bambaataa, Musician

"We have been very conditioned by the cultures that we come from and are usually very identified with the particular gender that we happen to be a member of"

Andrew Cohen, Writer

"When we, through our educational culture, through the media, through the entertainment culture, give our children the impression that human beings cannot control their passions, we are telling them, in effect, that human beings cannot be trusted with freedom"

Alan Keyes, Politician

"Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden"

Amy Tan, Novelist

"When I was 24 I went to Nigeria and it was such a culture shock, growing up in Australia and suddenly being the only white man in this unit full of black men"

Bruce Beresford, Director

"A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment"

Beverly Sills, Musician

"Our incapacity to comprehend other cultures stems from our insistence on measuring things in our own terms"

Arthur Erickson, Architect

"The game is the ultimate significance to me because it is so important to a lot of people. It has left a mark on our culture to be voted as one of the best to ever play"

Barry Sanders, Athlete

"It's up to us to take pop culture back and to express quality and dignity for both boys and girls"

Ashley Judd, Actress

"Whenever culture has gone through a radical change, as ours has - from industrial age to information age - there are people who will deny that things have changed; they resist it and refuse to change"

Daniel Greenberg, Educator

"I had no words for these feelings. And then people started using the word Ms. Suddenly, there was this handle with which I could identify myself and understand why I felt so out of whack with the culture around me"

Betty Buckley, Actress

"Listen: our culture is saturated with irony whether we know it or not"

Barbara Kruger, Artist

"The United States and Turkey are the only two countries that don't have some kind of subsidy for the Arts. The whole culture in society has made certain films more acceptable. I turned down so many films in the '60s and '70s"

Alex North, Composer

"Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is threatened"

Archie Shepp, Musician

"When you talk about rap you have to understand that rap is part of the Hip-Hop culture"

Afrika Bambaataa, Musician

"The 1970s, the decade of my teenage years, was a transitional period in American youth culture"

Eric Allin Cornell, Physicist

"The down side of Americans being obsessed with pop culture is that they kind of like it light"

Bill Griffith, Cartoonist

"The tunes, rhythms, and messages are drawn mainly from secular culture"

Richard Morris, Clergyman

"Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn't really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously"

Christopher Nolan, Director

"I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture"

Etta James, Musician

"What can we say about a marketing culture that so openly feeds and colludes with obsession? The Disney empire has developed this to an unprecedented degree of professionalism"

Rowan Williams, Theologian

"Quite a lot of our contemporary culture is actually shot through with a resentment of limits and the passage of time, anger at what we can't do, fear or even disgust at growing old"

Rowan Williams, Theologian

"It was this society and culture that among other things - including economic opportunities here and repression in Europe - attracted subsequent generations of immigrants to this country"

Samuel P. Huntington, Sociologist

"A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends"

Henry A. Wallace, Vice President

"Some of these pro-drug messages come from popular culture"

John Walters, Musician

"Jazz, rock and roll, movies and comics are the culture of America"

Bill Griffith, Cartoonist

"The Jesuits had learned that a Christian mission to China could never succeed if it were not in a position to show and convince the Chinese intelligentsia of the superiority of the European culture"

Hu Shih, Philosopher

"Making the City Of Joy gave me the best political education of my life. It became a wrestling match between an Englishman who had gradually ceased to be a Marxist, and a culture that was becoming more Marxist by the day"

Roland Joffe, Director

"Japan is not a Western democracy. The Japanese have kept their traditions, culture and heritage, but they have joined the community of free nations"

Natan Sharansky, Writer

"It is important to remember that some of the most serious thinkers once thought that democracy was not compatible with the cultures of Germany, Italy, Japan, Latin America and Russia"

Natan Sharansky, Writer

"The whole celebrity culture thing - I'm fascinated by, and repelled by, and yet I end up knowing about it"

Anderson Cooper, Journalist

"I like the idea of bringing cartoon characters to life... and although the Americans have already attempted this, their culture is not sufficiently humane to make it work"

Gerard Depardieu, Actor

"I don't think you can in any way export culture with guns or tanks"

Bernardo Bertolucci, Director

"That said, there is a tendency to help the large industrial conglomerate more quickly than the small company you have never heard of. That is something in the culture we are trying to change"

Lawrence Eagleburger, Diplomat

"The Southern Baptist Church is a specific culture in itself. So, I had to study, talk to people, watch tape and go to performances to see how Gospel artists move compared to secular artists"

Boris Kodjoe, Actor

"Sometimes in the black culture, being raised as an independent woman is misconstrued as someone who doesn't need a man. I think that's wrong. I think we all need someone"

Boris Kodjoe, Actor

"Different members of different cultures will think that some things are beautiful"

Jock Sturges, Photographer

"Indian culture certainly gives the Indian mind, including the mind of the Indian scientist, the ability to think out of the box"

Roland Joffe, Director

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