3,162 Quotes About Culture

Look at their arts, their power of turning stone into lifelike figures, and above all, the way in which they can transfer their thoughts to white leaves, so that others, many many years hence, can read them and know all that was passing, and what men thought and did in the long bygone. Truly it is marvelous.

A matter neither sensual nor sensational is ignored by the art of today.

If you want to make use of the advantages of civilisation, but are not prepared to concern yourself with the upholding of civilisation—you are done.

Culture uses art to dream the deaths of beautiful women.

Ideas about a person's place in society, his role, lifestyle, and ego qualities will lose their hold as the cohesive forces in society disintegrate. Subculture values will proliferate to such a bewildering extent that a whole new class of professionals will arise to control them. Such a Transmutation Technology will deal in fashions, in ways of being. Lifestyle consultants will become the new priests of our civilizations. They will be the new magicians.

Charity is one of those remarkable words that helps to identify the fault lines of a culture.

The average European or American easily succumbs to the illusion that thecultural experiences of the West are not merely superior but outof all proportion to those of the rest of the world; and thus, thatthe Western way of life is the only valid norm by which otherways of life could be adjudged - implying, of course, that everyintellectual concept, social institution or ethical valuation thatdisagrees with the Western 'norm' belongs ipso to lowergrade of existence.

It should make us take seriously the consequences of a culture in which openness and acceptance are nothing more than part of the job description that some people despise and leave behind like a worn-out shirt once they leave work.

...In all this, financialization has done what people back in the 1950s and '60s and '70s worried and warned that the Communists would do if they took over: centralize control of the economy, turn Americans into interchangeable cogs serving an inhumane system, and allow only a well-connected elite to live well. Extreme Capitalism resembles Communism: yet another whopping irony.