Quotes: Culture

By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you’d be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.

But the further step, by means of which a civilization is given its quality or culture, is only attained by a process of cellular division, in the course of which the individual is differentiated, made distinct from and independent of the parent group.

We are somehow natured, not just to reproduce, but for sociality and even for culture.

But again, we, I think, over the years have set the example for a lot of nations that may not have had the same values, the same type of coming out of the same culture that we as Americans have and enjoy. But we can be an example, a role model for them.

The teacher of history’s work should be, ideally, not simply a description of past cultures, but a performance of the culture in which we live and are increasingly taking our being.

The Church cannot be content to live in its stained-glass house and throw stones through the picture window of modern culture.

Culture is not made up but something that evolves which is human.

Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former.

It’s a wonderful thing to see a segment of our population that is open and eager to learn more about Chinese culture. It has filtered into the mainstream. You see credit-card ads on TV with white couples and Chinese babies.

I acquired an admiration for Japanese culture, art, and architecture, and learned of the existence of the game of GO, which I still play.