Best 5122 quotes in «culture quotes» category

No gaming outside of the venue without a sanctioned game master.

no human culture is inaccessible to someone who makes the effort to understand, to learn, to inhabit another world.

No matter what is happening in the world, I continue to believe in humanity. The power of positive thinking is always enough.

No matter where you live, you have the memory of something you used to eat that is no longer a part of your diet - something your grandmother used to make, something a small shop used to carry. Something we have lost. This extinction is a process; it happens one meal at a time.

No one chooses which culture to be born into or can be blamed for how that culture evolved in past centuries.

No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting-points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind. Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or Black, or Western, or Oriental. Yet just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival in fact is about the connections between things; in Eliot’s phrase, reality cannot be deprived of the “other echoes [that] inhabit the garden.” It is more rewarding - and more difficult - to think concretely and sympathetically, contrapuntally, about others than only about “us.” But this also means not trying to rule others, not trying to classify them or put them in hierarchies, above all, not constantly reiterating how “our” culture or country is number one (or not number one, for that matter).

Normality is an illusion, created by a conservative culture to control behaviour

Nota dell'autrice: Lo stesso si può dire naturalmente di molte opere qui citate. Non si denuncerà mai abbastanza il fatto che libri rari, esauriti, trovabili soltanto sugli scaffali di qualche biblioteca, o articoli pubblicati su vecchi numeri di riviste di alta cultura, per l'immensa maggioranza del pubblico sono totalmente inaccessibili. Novantanove volte su cento, il lettore desideroso di apprendere, ma a corto di tempo e privo delle poche nozioni tecniche familiari all'erudito di professione, resta - volente o nolente - alla mercè di opere divulgative, scelte più o meno a caso; di queste, a loro volta, le più pregevoli, non sempre ristampate, diventano introvabili. Quella che noi chiamiamo «la nostra cultura», è più di quel che si creda una cultura per iniziati.

Not agreeing with something that happened in history or with another person’s traditions doesn’t provide license to eradicate or vilify entire aspects of the past.

Not every dream grows on every land, so you got to watch out! “Sugar cane” dreams should find the environment where there is flooding of great ideas from great people. It will die off if it is planted at the place where the drought of discouragement is a well cherished culture!

Not every artist has to make a living making art. Millions of people who play guitar would do well to keep their day jobs. Plenty of people make incredible art "on the side". William Faulkner wasn't any less of an artist for writing As I lay Dying on the back of a wheelbarrow during breaks in his job shoveling coal for the electric company.

Nothing mitigates the throes of depression like a steaming plate of spaghetti and meatballs with marinara sauce and grated parmasan cheese, with a good fresh bread to wipe up.

Not only was it impossible to truly belong in America, but he didn't fit in here anymore either. He was a dweller of two lands, accepted by none.

Not without deep pain do we admit to ourselves that the artists of all ages have in their highest flights carried to heavenly transfiguration precisely those conceptions that we now recognize as false: they are the glorifiers of the religious and philosophical errors of humanity, and they could not have done this without their belief in the absolute truth of these errors. Now if the belief in such truth generally diminishes, if the rainbow colors at the outermost ends of human knowing and imagining fade: then the species of art that, like the Divina commedia, Raphael's pictures, Michelangelo's frescoes, the Gothic cathedrals, presupposes not only a cosmic, but also a metaphysical significance for art objects can never blossom again. A touching tale will come of this, that there was once such an art, such belief by artists.

Nowadays, people no longer know Beethoven's Ninth from concerts, but form the for lines of the 'Ode to Joy' that they hear every day in the ad for Bella Perfume.

Now a theist, he thought he should behave like one, even if it meant him during "the fussy, time-wasting, botheration of it all! the bells, the crowds, the umbrellas, the notices, the bustle, the perpetual arranging and organizing," and, worst of all, the hymns and organ music.

Now, it so happens that our culture—or lack of it, for our culture is in a state of flux and crisis—places a high value on materialism, and, by extension, greed. Our culture’s emphasis on greed is such that people have become immune to satisfaction. Having acquired one thing, they are immediately ready to desire the next thing that might suggest itself. Today, the object of desire is no longer satisfaction, but desire itself.

Obi-Wan Kenobi once said ‘your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them.’ It seems to be getting harder. Distinguishing reality from the illusions people make for us, or the ones we make for ourselves. I don’t know, maybe that’s part of the plan, to make me think I’m crazy…it’s working.

Of all the hardships and deprivations a people can suffer, I am not sure if the deprivations of art and culture are not the most devastating. As meat and rice are food for the body, art and culture are food for the soul. Starve the body and the person dies; starve the soul and the spirit dies.

…of constipation of the brain & diarrhea of the mouth.

Often I felt that these men were play-acting: the unreality of their role was their security, even their own destinies were to them saga and folk-tale rather than a private matter; these were men under a spell, men who had been turned into birds or even more likely into some strange beast, and who bore their magic shapes with the same unflurried equanimity, magnanimity, and dignity that we children had marvelled at the beasts of fairy tale. Did they not suspect, moreover, with the wordless apprehension of animals, that if their magic shapes were to be stripped from them the fairy tale would be at an end and their security gone, too, while real life would begin with all it's problems, perhaps in some town where there was neither nature or mirage, no link with the folk-tale and the past, no ancient path to the far side of the mountains and down to the river gullies and out beyond the grass plains, no landmarks from the Sagas? - Only a restless search for sterile, deadening enjoyment.

Officers came and went and were never a part of daily life.

Often I didn’t think I was cut out for the way the world is, being born into a common culture and system I would never choose for myself.

Often we consider Africa to be poor without taking their history into account

Og hvem er de mennesker, der har ret til at undertrykke, knuse og dræbe? Hvor får de deres ret fra? Fra Gud, fra Allah vil de nok sige. Men kan det passe, at ældgamle bøger, at ældgamle kulturer og traditioner kan være mere værd end os to? Mere hellige end menneskeliv? Mere værd end vores eksistens? Selv i dag?

Often we blame a region's religion when the oppression instead may be rooted in its culture. Yet, that acknowledged, it's also true that . . . it is often cited by the oppressors.

Often we don't notice the stringent rules to which our culture subjects us.

Oh I'm sure you're right," Auntie said. "Probably she's just as you say. But she looks to me like a very clever girl, and adaptable; you can see that from the shape of her ears.

Omenirea era săracă și se hrănea muncind, fără să distrugă bogățiile naturii, stînd la porțile ei cu modestie și fără să se gîndească încă la jaf. Răbdînd de foame putea să hrănească acolo cîțiva prinți și preoți, nu erau prea mulți, și această “nedreptate” socială este neînsemnată, dacă ținem seama de faptul că această diferență era necesară pentru formarea culturii. ... Nici o egalitate nu va înălța catedrale și palate, nu le va picta, nu le va împodobi. ... Din îndestulare se năștea disponibilitatea, din disponibilitate – capacitatea de apreciere, iar din capacitatea de apreciere – nivelul de cultură. În nici un caz invers. Cultura are nevoie de o bază, de bogăție. Nu pentru a satisface cerințele artistului, ci pentru a avea cu adevărat căutare. Este prea tîrziu deja să înțelegem acest rol pasiv, aproape biologic al aristocrației, și atît de evident. Nimănui nu-i trece acum prin cap că un extravagant din fruntea unui mic principat se pricepea pesemne foarte bine la muzică, dacă Haydn sau Bach erau “angajați” la el. Că papa se pricepea la pictură dacă avea de ales între Michelangelo și Rafael. Totuși aceștia erau niște oameni luminați. ... Doar pe seama inegalității sociale s-a perpetuat sensul umanității și posibilitatea ei.

Once information slipped the bonds of gravity and friction, it tended to gather where it was most valuable.

[On action filled leadership] Telling your team what to do is showmanship. Showing people how to do it is leadership. Leading for the purpose of visual effect will not accomplish the vision.

Once upon a time, when the evil spirit of darkness reigned over the Land of Azerbaijan, hiding the sun inside his underground caves, When the orphan sky peered at the Caucasus Mountains from the black dome of sorrow, When the rain shed its tears of ice upon the barren earth…

Once you have realized that law enforcement are not going to uphold your legal rights, you should always exercise your legal right to silence in their presence.

On dit père grec, mère suisse-française... On me demande, mais alors, quelle est votre patrie? Je dis que je ne suis ni tout à fait d'ici, ni tout à fait de là-bas. Ma patrie, c'est la relation. La relation est une réalité vitale. Parce qu'elle porte en elle le sens de l'autre. Pour la vie personnelle, et pour la vie collective - surtout aujourd'hui où les mentalités à cause des rapidités de communications coexistent -, si on n'a pas le sens de l'autre on a de la peine à vivre. (Le Temps, 17 Août 2007)

One can be deeply influenced by people to whom one is utterly hostile

One cannot worship the false god of nationalism and the God of Christianity at the same time. .

One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own nasty way.

One did not need to penetrate David's secret counsels or insinuate a man in his bodyguard. All one needed was a pair of years and access to the royal precincts. Just to eavesdrop upon his singing was to develop an accurate idea of his state of mind.

One day, it will all make sense, it will all be revealed. Until then, we learn to live and accept our shadows, our Déjà vu's, our dreams, our intuition that takes us to places that our minds never conceived, our bodies only perceived and our souls gladly remembered. Conversations and experiences amuse me, for I am experimenting with my feelings in ways that I can only do down here. Language makes up for a very interesting, yet bizarre way of putting thoughts into spoken form for the sound to move on in other peoples' ears, but every language, every sound, every word carries with it a long history, a deep culture and the souls of the many people who have previously used it throughout the centuries. Our hearts give us direction, hope and the passion to keep moving forward.. But what we do when they're frozen, broken, torn apart by an unhealthy way of living is what gives us new strength to push forward or kills us completely. Deep inside, we feed the entities that empower the fight between our internal demons and angels. We feed them with our thoughts, our emotions, our self-talk and the external talk that we lower our shields to at times. Whether good or bad, this brings about a change internally and at times there isn't much we can do to protect ourselves. At times, we need to let things be and go along with it. Of course, we're all worried, stressed, confused and lacking direction at times and we're in the same way at peace, stable and walking in the right direction once we get things sorted. Give it some time, give it some light, give it some love. You're not very far away.

One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway… We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking… The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality.

One mark of originality that can win canonical status for a literary work is strangeness that we either never altogether assimilate, or that becomes such a given that we are blinded to its idiosyncrasies.

One of Scotland's most important cultural exports - stories.

One of the DANGERS of monoculturalism is intellectual fascism

One of the most effective ways of changing the way people think is to change the way they worship.

One of the truly bizarre things about our current cultural situation is that the leading figures of the scientific establishment seem genuinely amazed that the citizens do not accept finch-beak variation as proof of the claim that humans, like all animals and plants, are accidental products of a purposeless universe in which only material processes have operated from the beginning.

One paid for one's knowledge with one's skin.

One particularly harmful idea carried by our cultural narrative is that you need to find someone who will love you. Imagine if we believed this about any other basic need: food, water, oxygen. If you needed another person to provide you with those, you’d be considered dependent—if not disabled. Yet we so willingly put ourselves in this state with love.

One problem with today's culture is that we defend too many rights and ignore too many wrongs.

One of the highest marks of citizenship is fighting for the common defense.

One potential remedy for human stupidity is a dose of humility. National, religious and cultural tensions are made worse by the grandiose feeling that my nation, my religion and my culture are the most important in the world – hence my interests should come before the interests of anyone else, or of humankind as a whole. How can we make nations, religions and cultures a bit more realistic and modest about their true place in the world?