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Culture Quotes

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Culture Quotes

“Music may appeal to crude and coarse feelings or to refined and noble ones; and in so far as it does the latter it awakens the higher nature and works an effect, though but a transitory effect, of a beneficial kind. But the primary purpose of music is neither instruction nor culture but pleasure; and this is an all-sufficient purpose.”

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Book:Works
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“Butterfield 8, with its call-girl heroine working her way down the alphabet of men from Amherst to Yale, appeared at a very formative moment in my adolescence and impressed me forever with the persona of the prostitute, whom I continue to revere. The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture.”

MenWayMomentsCultureGirlForeverClaimsVictimFeministImpressedAdolescenceProstitutionPersonaConquerorHeroinesAlphabetOutlawYale
Author:Camille Paglia
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“Women themselves condition their daughters to serve the system of male primacy. If a daughter challenges it, the mother will generally defend the system rather than her daughter. These mothers, victims themselves, have unwittingly become wounded wounders. Women need to attack culture's oppression of women, for there truly is a godlike socializing power that induces women to "buy in" or collude, but we also need to confront our own part in accepting male dominance and take responsibility where appropriate.”

IfsNeedsMotherCultureWomenChallengesResponsibilityAcceptingConditionsDaughterVictimMalesOppressionAppropriateWoundedTaking ResponsibilityDominanceGodlikeSocializingPrimacyMale Dominance
Author:Sue Monk Kidd
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“What is pronounced these days is staying on the Internet for hours. It's really about distraction. We are living in such an over stimulated culture. There's a nervous energy of always having to be focused out there. People have a hard time just being happy, settled, and content. We're not taught how to just be by ourselves, be present. We always want to change the channel in our minds because we don't like what's going on. It's uncomfortable.”

PeopleWantMindHardCultureEnergyHoursTaughtInternetFocusedNervousThese DaysUncomfortableHard TimesStayingDistractionJust Being
Author:Geneen Roth
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“In the Germany of the l920s, the Weimar Republic, both orga­nismic biology and Gestalt psychology were part of a larger intellectual trend that saw itself as a protest movement against the increasing fragmentation and alienation of human nature. The entire Weimar culture was characterized by an antimechanistic outlook, a "hunger for wholeness". Organismic biology, Gestalt psychology, ecology, and, later on, general systems theory all grew out of this holistic zeitgeist.”

HumansCulturePsychologySawsHuman NatureMovementTheoryGrewIntellectualHungerGermanyProtestBiologyRepublicTrendsEcologyWholenessOutlookAlienationHolisticZeitgeistFragmentationGestaltSystems TheoryProtest Movements
Author:Fritjof Capra
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“Only in the Roman Empire and in Spain under Arab domination has culture been a potent factor. Under the Arab, the standard attained was wholly admirable; to Spain flocked the greatest scientists, thinkers, astronomers, and mathematicians of the world, and side by side there flourished a spirit of sweet human tolerance and a sense of purist chivalry. Then with the advent of Christianity, came the barbarians.”

WorldHumansSpiritCultureSidesChristianitySweetStandardsScientistToleranceFactorsEmpiresThinkerMathematicianDominationSpainAdmirableBarbariansRoman EmpireAdventChivalryAstronomers
Author:Adolf Hitler
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“The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. The promissory note which, with its plots and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged; the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu.”

RealCulturePleasureIndustryPromiseDrawsNotesSatisfiedConsumersPlotCheatIllusoryMenusDinersStaging
Book:Dialectic of Enlightenment
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“Capital burns off the nuance in a culture. Foreign investment, global markets, corporate acquisitions, the flow of information through transnational media, the attenuating influence of money that's electronic and sex that's cyberspaced, untouched money and computer-safe sex, the convergence of consumer desire--not that people want the same things, necessarily, but that they want the same range of choices.”

PeopleWantDesireChoicesCultureSexInfluenceMediaInformationSafeComputerFlowInvestmentConsumersCorporateRangeAcquisitionNuanceConvergence
Book:Underworld: Picador Classic
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“The United States has an isolationist and insular culture, combined with a global and interventionist posture. This highly dangerous and febrile mixture, which greatly facilitates the task of the fear-mongers and chauvinists, needs a very exact and nuanced diagnosis. I don't think that analogies from the totalitarian model, however suggestive, are sufficient.”

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Book:For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports
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“Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are.”

MenHas BeensStillsBookTodayCultureForgetDealsMassTraditionCriticismLonelySeriesCrowdsPlentyExceptionOur SocietyStringsConformityMediocrityConspiracyElitesVolumeStereotypeSymptomsDissentIndicationSellersOrganizationalBest SellersMass CultureEpithet
Author:Kenneth Rexroth
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“Therapy isn't curing somebody of something; it is a means of helping a person explore himself, his life, his consciousness. My purpose as a therapist is to find out what it means to be human. Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, "This is me and the world be damned!" Leaders have always been the ones to stand against the society - Socrates, Christ, Freud, all the way down the line.”

WorldWayHumansMeanPersonsHelpingPurposeCultureChristLinesHuman BeingsConsciousnessLeaderTherapyTherapistsWhat It Means To Be HumanThis Is Me
Author:Rollo May
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“Almost by definition, secularism cannot be a future: it's a present-tense culture that over time disconnects a society from cross-generational purpose. Which is why there are no examples of sustained atheist civilizations. "Atheistic humanism" became inhumanism in the hands of the Fascists and Communists and, in its less malign form in today's European Union, a kind of dehumamism in which a present-tense culture amuses itself to extinction. Post-Christian European culture is already post-cultural and, with its surging Muslim populations, will soon be post-European.”

KindHandsTodayChristianFormPurposeCultureExampleCivilizationCrossesUnionsAtheistHumanismPopulationDefinitionsPostsCommunistExtinctionSecularismTenseFascistsEuropean UnionAtheisticPresent Tense
Author:Mark Steyn
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“I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.”

WayDoeIdeasProblemCulturePowerfulPovertyRichViolenceConditionsCrimeRacismRootsVictimGreedSolveConvincedEndlessUselessCyclesSubstitutesPretendingUnemploymentDesperationMaintainingHomelessnessRetributionImprisonmentEliminationCycle Of Violence
Author:Howard Zinn
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“There is the past and its continuing horrors: violence, war, prejudices against those who are different, outrageous monopolization of the good earth's wealth by a few, political power in the hands of liars and murderers, the building of prisons instead of schools, the poisoning of the press and the entire culture by money. It is easy to become discouraged observing this, especially since this is what the press and television insist that we look at, and nothing more.”

LooksDifferentWarHandsSchoolEarthPastPoliticalCultureEasyWealthViolenceTelevisionBuildingHorrorPrejudicePressesPrisonLiarsContinuingMurdererDiscouragedObservingOutrageousPolitical PowerPoisoningGood Earth
Book:A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
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“In its relation to the reality of daily life, the high culture of the past was many things opposition and adornment, outcry and resignation. But it was also the appearance of the realm of freedom: the refusal to behave.”

RealityPastCultureRelationAppearanceBehaveRealmsOppositionDaily LifeRefusalResignationAdornment
Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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“The neo-conservative critics of leftist critics of mass culture ridicule the protest against Bach as background music in the kitchen, against Plato and Hegel, Shelley and Baudelaire, Marx and Freud in the drugstore. Instead, they insist on recognition of the fact that the classics have left the mausoleum and come to life again, that people are just so much more educated. True, but coming to life as classics, they come to life as other than themselves; they are deprived of their antagonistic force, of the estrangement which was the very dimension of their truth.”

PeopleFactsCultureLeftForceMassCriticsConservativeBackgroundsEducatedRecognitionKitchenDimensionsProtestPlatoRidiculeDeprivedLeftistsHegelEstrangementMass CultureBaudelaireShelleyBackground MusicMausoleum
Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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“Institutionalized desublimation thus appears to be an aspect of the "conquest of transcendence" achieved by the one-dimensional society. Just as this society tends to reduce, and even absorb opposition (the qualitative difference!) in the realm of politics and higher culture, so it does in the instinctual sphere. The result is the atrophy of the mental organs for grasping the contradictions and the alternatives and, in the one remaining dimension of technological rationality, the Happy Consciousness comes to prevail.”

DoeCultureDifferencesResultsConsciousnessHigherAspectAlternativesRealmsDimensionsOppositionContradictionSpheresOrgansTechnologicalRationalityConquestTranscendenceGraspingThis SocietyAtrophyQualitative
Book:One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
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“Women's scars and rituals involved beauty (piercing ears and noses, binding feet, and wearing corsets); men's involved protecting women. In cultures in which physical strength is still the best way to protect women, as among the Dodos in Uganda, each time a man kills a man, he is awarded a ritual scar; the more scars, the more he is considered eligible.”

MenWayStillsCultureFeetInvolvedProtectEarsBest WayNosesRitualScarBindingPiercingsCorsetsUgandaPhysical StrengthProtect Women
Author:Warren Farrell
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“It would be hard to find a single example in history in which a group that cast more than 50 percent of the vote got away with calling itself the victim... Women are the only 'oppressed' group to share the same parents as the 'oppressor'; to be born into the middle class and upper class as frequently as the 'oppressor'; to own more of the culture's luxury items than the 'oppressor'.”

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Book:The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex
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“We need to create an enterprise culture, a society where successful entrepreneurs are respected and admired, not treated with suspicion and disdain. And in which we see less envy of other peoples' achievements and mistrust of commerce, and a greater readiness to get out there and join in the process.”

NeedsCultureProcessSuccessfulGreaterAchievementEntrepreneurEnvyTreatedEnterpriseCommerceSuspicionReadinessMistrustDisdainSuccessful Entrepreneurs
Author:Norman Tebbit
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“[Corporate programming] is often done to the point where the individual is completely submerged in corporate "culture" with no outlet for unique talents and skills. Corporate practices can be directly hostile to individuals with exceptional skills and initiative in technical matters. I consider such management of technical people cruel and wasteful.”

PeopleMatterDoneCultureIndividualPracticeTalentSkillsUniqueManagementCorporateProgrammingInitiativeHostileExceptionalOutletsCorporate CultureSubmergedUnique Talents
Author:Bjarne Stroustrup
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