culture

A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There could be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress.

—Mill,John Stuart

America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms, its humour, its music.How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.

—Rollins, Sonny (TheodoreWalter)

The word 'civilization'to my mind is coupled with death. When I use the word, I see civilization as a crippling, thwarting thing, a stultifying thing† Civilization is the arteriosclerosis of culture.

—Miller, Henry Valentine

Morgan liked to imagine the town as some immense yeast culture, left in a deep cupboard by an absent- minded lab technician, festering uncontrolled, running rampant in the ideal growing conditions.

—Boyd,William Andrew Murray

The breasts, the hallmark of our culture.You cannot sell anything in America without the breasts.

—Donahue, Phil

I wish that I could bring Stonehenge to Nyasaland, to show that there was a time when Britain had a savage culture.

—Banda, Hastings Kamuzu

Canada could have enjoyed: English government, French culture, And American know-how. Instead it ended up with: English know-how, French government, And American culture.

—Colombo,John Robert

It's all honourable enough in its way, but it creates societies which simply cannot sustain any kind of democratic structure. It always leads to totalitarian and corrupt tyrannies† There's no tradition of moral individual courage in Chinese culture.

—Mo,Timothy

Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.

—Arnold, Matthew

My culture and my language have the right to exist, and no one has the authority to dismiss that.

—Kelman,James

   Culture is dead, now let us start creating.

—Anonymous

Culture is the passion for sweetness and light, and (what is more) the passion for making them prevail.

—Arnold, Matthew

Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

Every intelligent painter carries the whole culture of modern painting in his head†everything he paints is both an homage and a critique.

—Motherwell, Robert

'He knows'says Hebraism,'his Bible!'öwhenever we hear this said, we may, without any elaborate defence of culture, content ourselves with answering simply: 'No man, who knows nothing else, knows even his Bible.'

—Arnold, Matthew

The theater is the primary evidence of a nation's culture.

—Thurber,James Grover

The evolution of culture issynonymous with theremoval of ornament from utilitarian objects.

—Loos, Adolf

El orbe hispano nunca se vino abajo, ni siquiera a la ca|¤da del imperio espan‹  ol, sino que se ha multiplicado en numerosas facetas de ensanches todav|¤a insospechados† No somos pueblos en estado de candor, que se deslumbren fa¤  cilmente con los instrumentos externos de que se acompan‹  a la cultura, sino pueblos que heredan una vieja civilizacio¤  n y exigen la excelencia misma de la cultura. The Hispanic world never crumbled, not even after the Spanish Empire fell, but instead has multiplied itself in broad ways that are still largely unknown† Our people are not naive and are not blinded by the external tools that go together with culture; we are rather the inheritors of an old civilization, and we demand the excellence proper to culture itself.

—Reyes, Alfonso

Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing culture in our land.

—Mao Zedong or MaoTse-tung

Football is an art more central to our culture than anything the Arts Council deigns to recognize.

—Greer, Germaine

The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech.We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.

—Rodriguez, Richard

Craft is the handprint of all culture.

—Anonymous

Wenn ichKultur h o« re†entsichere ich meinen Browning! When I hear anyone talk of culture†I take off the safety catch on my Browning!

—Johst, Hanns

Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.

—Gould, StephenJay

There is a misunderstanding by marketers in our culture about what freedom of choice is. In the market, it is equated with multiplying choice. This is a misconception. If you have infinite choice, people are reduced to passivity.

—Gitlin,Todd

The men of culture are the true apostles of equality.

—Arnold, Matthew

Modern European culture is nothing but a culture of natural sciences.

—SunYat-Sen or  SunYixian

   Art is not made only one way, art is a point of view† Rembrandt in our days would be Rembrandt again, because the work of the master is his self. But in order to be Rembrandt in ourdayshe would have used new ways that would give a new culture.

—Werefkin, Marianne

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there isno place for industry; becausethe fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

—Hobbes,Thomas

I've finally figured out whysoap operas are, and logically should be, so popular with generations of housebound women. They are the only place in our culture where grown-up men take seriously all the things that grown- up women have to deal with all day long.

—Steinem, Gloria

Mrs Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone.

—Wharton, Edith Newbold ne¤  e Jones

The self isnow the sacred cow of American culture, self- esteem is sacrosanct, and so we labour to turn arts education into a system in which no one can fail. In the same spirit, tennis could be shorn of its elitist overtones: you just get rid of the net.

—Hughes, Robert Studley Forrest

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practising it.

—Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)

We must free ourselves from thinking in terms of nation states.The countries of westernEuropeareno longer ina position to protect themselves individually. Not one of them is any longer in a position to salvage Europe's culture.

—Adenauer, Konrad

The function of literature through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and thehigh authorityof theself in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.

—Trillin, Calvin Marshall

   Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.

—Galbraith,John Kenneth

It was unhealthyand unsafe, and of no interest whatever. 'But what,' I said,'about thetigers ?' 'Tigers, perhaps,' he replied pityingly,'but no culture.'

—Maclean, Sir Fitzroy Hew

The very power of science to hold knowledge as collective knowledge is founded upon a degree and a quality of trust which are arguably unparalleled elsewhere in our culture† Scientists know so much about the natural world by knowing so much about whom they can trust.

—Shapin, Steven

Das, worin man die nationalen Unterschiede findet, ist viel mehr, als man bis jetzt eingesehen hat, nur der Unterschied verschiedener Kulturstufen und zum geringstenTeile etwas Bleibendes (und auch dies nicht in einem strengen Sinne). National differences consist, far more than has hitherto been observed, only in the differences of variousgrades of culture, and are only to a very small extent permanent (and not even that in a strict sense).

—Nietzsche, FriedrichWilhelm

All my wife has ever taken from the Mediterraneanö from that whole vast intuitive cultureöare four bottles of Chianti to make into lamps.

—Shaffer, Peter

   The Versailles of American corporate culture.

—Wolfe,Tom (Thomas Kennerley)