3,162 Quotes About Culture

Whether various acts of culturally sanctioned cannibalism existed or not (and it seems absurd to consider that they never did), the fact remains that for the vast majority of Westerners, our feelings regarding the practice have resulted (at least in part) from our exposure to a long list of influential writers beginning with the Ancient Greeks and extending into the 21st century.

Topography defines place and the human situation therein.

Anthropology studies the phenomenon of man, not simply man's mind, his body, evolution, origins, tools, art, or groups alone, but as parts or aspects of a general pattern, or whole. To emphasize this fact and make it a part of their ongoing effort, anthropologists have brought a general word into widespread use to stand for the phenomenon, and that word is culture.

I think everything begins and ends with philosophy. Philosophy is not appreciated and is marginal now.

Your food will converge with my foodYour clothes will stitch with my clothesYour culture will merge with my cultureWe'll create something beautiful Something newWe'll call it our culture

People don't know what to do with you if you are not trying to assimilate.

What if most fiction is, at best, moderately important? What if it is so vague and culturally drivel-some, and so mediated by everything else once the culture industry extrudes it through a writer-shaped nozzle, that our stern declarations about subversive literature are, mostly, kind of adorable?

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.

So by slow degrees the Britons were seduced by pleasant pastimes... until finally the gullible natives came to call their slavery "culture".