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Culture Quotes

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Culture Quotes

“Part of what we want to do with the Heroic Imagination Project is to get kids to think about what it means to be a hero. The most basic concept of a hero is socially constructed: It differs from culture to culture and changes over time. Think of Christopher Columbus. Until recently, he was a hero. Now he's a genocidal murderer! If he were alive today, he'd say, "What happened? I used to be a hero, and now people are throwing tomatoes at me!”

PeopleIfsThinkingWantMeanKidsTodayUsedCultureImaginationAliveHappenedHeroProjectsConceptsUsed To BeThrowingHeroicMurdererLive For TodayTomatoesColumbusChanges Over Time
Author:Philip Zimbardo
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“It is now very clear that techniques of machine-human interfacing, pharmacology of the synthetic variety, all kinds of manipulative techniques, all kinds of data storage, imaging and retrieval techniques - all of this is coalescing toward the potential of a truly demonic or angelic kind of self-imaging of our culture... And the people who are on the demonic side are fully aware of this and hurrying full-tilt forward with their plans to capture everyone as a 100% believing consumer inside some kind of a beige furnished fascism that won't even raise a ripple.”

PeopleBelieveHumansKindSelfCultureSidesClearPlansMachinesRaisesTechniqueAll KindsVarietyDataConsumersCaptureFascismRippleAngelicStorageDemonicHurryingManipulativeSyntheticTiltImagingPharmacology
Author:Terence McKenna
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“One of the most insidious myths in American wine culture is that a wine is good if you like it. Liking a wine has nothing to do with whether it is good. Liking a wine has to do with liking that wine, period. Wine requires two assessments: one subjective, the other objective. In this it is like literature. You may not like reading Shakespeare but agree that Shakespeare was a great writer nonetheless.”

IfsMayTwoCultureReadingLiteraturePeriodsAgreeWineMythObjectivesSubjectiveYou Like ItAssessmentGreat WritersInsidiousReading Shakespeare
Author:Karen MacNeil
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“In ancient times there was no public education, except that of the forum, the theater, and the street, and the general degree of illiteracy was very high. The early men of science were left very much to themselves and such a phrase as "the scientific culture of Alexandria in the third century B.C." does not cover any reality. In a sense, this is still true today; the real pioneers are so far ahead of the crowd (even a very literate crowd) that they remain almost alone.”

MenDoeStillsRealRealityTodayCultureLeftStreetsCenturyDegreesThirdsTheaterAncientCrowdsPhrasesPioneersPublic EducationForumsIlliteracyAncient TimesAlexandria
Author:George Sarton
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“The ego must be able to listen attentively and to give itself, without any further design or purpose, to that inner urge toward growth. People living in cultures more securely rooted than our own have less trouble in understanding that it is necessary to give up the utilitarian attitude of conscious planning in order to make way for the inner growth of the personality.”

PeopleWayGivingAblePurposeOrderCultureUnderstandingGrowthAttitudeTroubleDesignPersonalityEgoGiving UpConsciousPlanningUrgesRootedUtilitarianInner Growth
Author:Marie-Louise von Franz
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“One could dismiss the zombie trend as merely feeding a mass public that craves the strange and bizarre. Such an explanation would be only skin-deep. Popular culture often provides a window into the subliminal or unstated fears of citizens, and zombies are no exception. Some cultural commentators argue that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are a primary cause for renewed interest in the living dead, and the numbers appear to back up this assertion.”

Would BeCultureCausesInterestNumbersStrangeCitizensMassWindowSkinsArguingTerroristPrimariesExplanationExceptionTrendsSeptemberFeedingBizarreZombieCraveAssertionSeptember 11CommentatorsPopular CultureTerrorist AttacksSubliminalSeptember 11 2001Skin Deep
Author:Daniel Drezner
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“And when it is suggested that the inward feelings of power or inward monitions or losses of judgement are the germs out of which the divine machinery developed, I return that truth is just the reverse, that the presence of voices which had to be obeyed were the absolute prerequisite to the conscious stage of mind in which it is the self that is responsible and can debate within itself, can order and direct, and that the creation of such a self is the product of culture. In a sense, we have become our own gods.”

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Author:Julian Jaynes
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“There is an art to grieving. To grieve well the loss of anyone or anything--a parent, a love, a child, an era, a home, a job--is a creative act. It takes attention and patience and courage. But many of us do not know how to grieve. We were never taught, and we don't see examples of full-bodied grieving around us. Our culture favors the fast-food model of mourning--get over it quick and get back to work; affix the bandage of "closure" and move on.”

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Author:Elizabeth Lesser
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“The truth is, everything we know about America, everything Americans come to know about being American, isn't from the news. I live there. We don't go home at the end of the day and think, "Well, I really know who I am now because the Wall Street Journal says that the Stock Exchange closed at this many points." What we know about how to be who we are comes from stories. It comes from the novels, the movies, the fashion magazines. It comes from popular culture.”

ThinkingKnowsWellsEndsStoriesHomeAmericaCultureNovelStreetsFashionWallTruth IsNewsWho I AmMagazinesWho We AreThe End Of The DayJournalPopular CultureStock ExchangeWall Street JournalFashion Magazines
Author:Chris Abani
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“Much of the image of the amazingness of America comes from the movies into other cultures. And it's much the same thing when you reverse it. Much of Africa is presented through poverty, through drought and war. [But] you're not presenting people, you're not presenting countries, you're not presenting complexity, and so people can't care about an amorphous mass called Africa.”

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Author:Chris Abani
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“The broader unquestioned premises upon which my own culture founded its view of the human condition, such as the one that Unhappiness is as legitimate a part of experience as happiness and necessary in order to render happiness appreciable, or that it is more advantageous to be young than to be old: those still took me a long time to pry loose for reexamination.”

HumansLongStillsYoungOrderCultureMy OwnViewsConditionsLong TimeUnhappinessHuman ConditionPremisesBe Young
Book:The Continuum Concept: Allowing Human Nature to Work Successfully
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“What if it turns out there really are witches and vampires and werewolves living right here alongside us? After all, what better disguise could there be than to get your image enshrined in the culture of the mass media? Anything that's described in artistic terms and shown in the movies stops being frightening and mysterious. For real horror you need the spoken word, you need an old grandpa sitting on a bench, scaring the grandkids in the evening.”

IfsNeedsRealTurnsCultureTermMediaHorrorMassSittingMysteriousVampireEveningArtisticWhat IfWitchFrighteningDisguiseBenchesWerewolfGrandpaSpoken WordMass MediaGrandkidsLiving Right
Author:Sergei Lukyanenko
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“Every culture, if its natural development is not too much affected by political restrictions, experiences a perpetual renewal of the formative urge, and out of that comes an ever growing diversity of creative activity. Every successful piece of work stirs the desire for greater perfection and deeper inspiration; each new form becomes the herald of new possibilities of development.”

IfsInspirationFormPoliticalDesireCultureNaturalCreativeSuccessfulGreaterToo MuchPiecesGrowingPossibilityDevelopmentActivityDiversityPerfectionDeeperUrgesAffectedPerpetualRenewalRestrictionNew Possibilities
Book:Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice
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“For better or worse, we are the Court of Appeals for the Hollywood Circuit. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights. But much of their livelihood - and much of the vibrancy of our culture - also depends on the existence of other intangible rights: The right to draw ideas from a rich and varied public domain, and the right to mock, for profit as well as fun, the cultural icons of our time.”

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Author:Alex Kozinski
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“The point of recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony unleashes one of the most horrifyingly violent episodes in the history of music....The point is not to hold up Beethoven as exceptionally monstrous. The Ninth Symphony is probably our most compelling articulation in music of the contradictory impulses that have organized patriarchal culture since the Enlightenment. Moreover, within the parameters of his own musical compositions, he may be heard as enacting a critique of narrative obligations that is...devestating.”

FirstsMayCultureHeardMovementEnlightenmentMusicalViolentObligationNarrativeImpulseOrganizedEpisodesCompellingCompositionContradictorySymphonyCritiqueMonstrousParametersArticulationHistory Of MusicMusical CompositionRecapitulation
Author:Susan McClary
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“The drug war has nothing to do with making communities livable or creating a decent future for black kids. On the contrary, prohibition is directly responsible for the power of crack dealers to terrorize whole neighborhoods. And every cent spent on the cops, investigators, bureaucrats, courts, jails, weapons, and tests required to feed the drug-war machine is a cent not spent on reversing the social policies that have destroyed the cities, nourished racism, and laid the groundwork for crack culture.”

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Book:No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays
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“Should or can there be a single standard of behavior for both sexes? Is there such a thing as a biologically rooted female culture that should remain separate from male culture, partly because it is different than or superior to male culture? Women must convert their love for and reliance on strength and skill in others to a love for all manner of strength and skill in themselves.”

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Author:Phyllis Chesler
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“A crucial difference between lite libertarians and the right kind is that to the former, the idea of liberty is propositional - a deracinated principle, unmoored from the realities of history, hierarchy, biology, tradition, culture, values. Conversely, the paleolibertarian grasps that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure.”

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Author:Ilana Mercer
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