The idea that consumerism creates artificial desires rests on a wistful ignorance of history and human nature, on the hazy, romantic feeling that there existed some halcyon era of noble savages with purely natural needs. Close your Rousseau, open your Darwin. Once fed and sheltered, our needs have always been cultural. Until there is some […]
Culture Quotes
Culture is not just an ornament; it is the expression of a nation’s character, and at the same time it is a powerful instrument to mould character. The end of culture is right living.
It is culture which is the cornerstone of amity, the prerequisite of concord.
The natives are superficially agreeable, but they go in for cannibalism, headhunting, infanticide, incest, avoidance and joking relationships, and biting lice in half with their teeth.
Culture is the habit of being pleased with the best and knowing why.
Judging cultures is not the same as judging races. One’s race is unchosen; no-one can be condemned for membership of a racial group. However, culture is chosen, so a person can be condemned for their acceptance of an immoral culture. The equivocation of culture with race is one of the commonest forms of racism today: […]
We are like people born in a cage and unable to visualize any world beyond our familiar bars of prejudice and superstition. That Opinion the Few create in order to control the Many has seen to it that we are kept in permanent ignorance of our actual estate. Even so, a number of prisoners are […]
We do not understand the ideals of other cultures better by misunderstanding our own, or adequately enrich an intercultural synthesis by offering to it anything less than the best we have. That best is the theory and practice of intellectual, moral, and political freedom, in a form and at a level which neither medieval, Mexican, […]
Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors, who when their turn comes will manufacture professors.
Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.
