3,162 Quotes About Culture

E adevărat: cultura nu este necesară pentru supraviețuirea omului, necesare sunt doar pâinea și apa. Este adevărat că omul supraviețuiește dacă are pâine să mănânce și apă să bea, dar mulțumindu-se doar cu atât moare întreaga omenire.

Cultures have norms that reflect centuries of shared beliefs and ideals. Do not expect to scoff at such things with impunity. You will be punished somehow, even if just through isolation — a position of real powerlessness.

She was the only child of an interracial couple, one half of which was disabled. When she was growing up, her straw-headed classmates asked her curtly, "What are you?

We find the Mayan pantheon peculiar. By our standards, suicide and human sacrifice are unacceptable. We tend not to notice the peculiarities of our own culture. We accept the thousands of children who wear braces to correct their teeth, yet we consider the Maya odd for filing teeth to beautify them. Each culture defines its own idiosyncracies and then forgets that it has done so.

We wouldn't expect to gather crucial information about modern cultures from their knives, forks, hammers, and screwdrivers, so why should we suddenly set different standards when we try to understand the ancient world?

just because they were dead. People always love people more when they’re dead.

Scholars in a great many disciplines focus their studies on human beings. The main differences between the disciplines are not the objects of their study nor even the methods they use, but the points of view that guide their inquiries.

Usability plays a much wider role in our lives than most people realize. It’s notjust about using a website, a piece of software, or the latest technology. Usability isabout setting up a tent, relighting a furnace to heat a home, trying to figure out atax form, or driving an unfamiliar rental car. Usability impacts everyone, every day.It cuts across cultures, age, gender, and economic class.

The main goal here is to make ourselves “familiar enough” to straight people to win their acceptance. But why should that be of paramount importance? Precisely why would we want to do ourselves over in their image? To become more like them would be to forget our own singular history and the special insights and perspectives that derive from it, giving us, as spies in the culture, a unique perspective for evaluating and critiquing aspects of mainstream culture.