Common Cultural Quotes & Sayings

The time has come to make the protection of children - all our children - a common cause that can unite us across the boundaries of our political orientation, religious affiliation and cultural traditions. We must reclaim our lost taboos, and make the abuse and brutalization of children simply unaccepetable. — Olara Otunnu

I like to mix the real and the imaginary. Sometimes it is characters inspired by real people I know or know of. Sometimes it is a named person from the common cultural dreamscape. And it is tricky, because they have a lot of associated ideas that come with them, and a lot of actual facts. — Dana Spiotta

We're not all the same. A common liberal refrain ... is that differences between individuals are statistically more significant than those between cultural, ethnic, and racial groups. I don't see why the fact of inter-individual differences would nullify inter-group variance. That's liberal logic for you. — Ilana Mercer

It was not their irritating assumption of equality that annoyed Nicholai so much as their cultural confusions. The Americans seemed to confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with courage, machismo with manhood, liberty with freedom, wordiness with articulation, fun with pleasure - in short, all of the misconceptions common to those who assume that justice implies equality for all, rather than equality for equals. — Trevanian

The cultural forces that help politically sustain both the militaristic and the corporate function of the Deep State, however, are growing more irrational and antiscience. A military tradition that glories in force and appeals to self-sacrifice is the polar opposite of the Enlightenment heritate of rationality, the search for peace, and a belief in the common destiny of mankind. The warrior-leader, like the witch doctor, ultimately appeals to irrational emotionalism; and the cultural psychology that produces the bravest and most loyal warriors is a mind-set that is usually hostile to the sort of free inquiry of which scientific progress depends. This dynamic is observable in Afghanistan: no outside power has been able to conquer and pacify that society for millennia because of the tenacity of its warrior spirit; yet the country has one of the highest illiteracy rates on earth and is barely out of the Bronze Age in social development. p 260 — Mike Lofgren

The Arts, especially film, transcend all cultural barriers, hopefully offering an avenue where all people can find a common place to meet, understand each other, and nurture a safe world for all our children to grow strong within. — Carson Grant

You must try to change some things in your society and all good changes first start attacking old rotten ideas, storming common cultural stupidities and raiding spiritual lies, fearlessly and even ruthlessly! And never forget that you can defat ideas only with ideas! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Jiu Jitsu forges friendships in a way I've never known. Being involved in an art as intimate as this, where bodily connection is a must, the common cultural boundaries of personal space are broken. You will never see more hugs, high fives, and physical expressions of love than on the mats. Ultimately, this proves to be one of the most fulfilling aspects of our pursuit of mastery. Along the way, we learn to love others as we love ourselves. — Chris Matakas

It would be wrong to interpret the growth of British national consciousness in this period in terms of a new cultural and political uniformity being resolutely imposed on the peripheries of the island by its centre. For many poorer and less literate Britons, Scotland, Wales and England remained more potent rallying calls than Great Britain, except in times of danger from abroad. And even among the politically educated, it was common to think in terms of dual nationalities, not a single national identity. — Linda Colley

Because every family is a distinct cultural unit, it is good that our methods differ. God did not intend for us to walk in lockstep with one another. We ought to rejoice in a common commitment to biblical principles and in the variety of methods God's people employ. — Nancy Wilson

The key to resolving international conflict with a positive outcome includes looking for a win-win situation, finding common ground, formulating proactive strategies, using effective negotiation and communication, and appreciating cultural differences. — Amit Ray

The beauty of when you watch good television or films is that, yes, you may have a multi-cultural cast but those roles could be anybody - they could be white, they could be black. To show the world that we have more in common than we have different with each other is to me the ultimate goal of all of that. It does help unite in people's mind the thought that people are the same. Yes, there's going to be cultural differences, but for the most part, we are all in the same gang as human beings. — Mekhi Phifer

Cross-cultural marriage is difficult, especially when one person has to live in another country. But I thought there was a very good chance of it working because people grow together if they have a common passion. — Imran Khan

The individual is seen as the ultimate. Consequently, we have witneed a decline of civic virtue at the expense of the common good. In addition, the loss of an objective standard for determining what is good and healthy for society has left us with nothing but a vague cultural desire to respect diversity and tolerate the perspectives and choices of others. Radical individualism is undermining the corporate solidarity that gave rise to our national success. — Chris Brauns

And not only that but ... when the station is completed, there will be an international crew made of astronauts coming from different cultural experiences, speaking different languages, but working together for a common goal. — Umberto Guidoni

It is, indeed, perhaps the greatest prospect of humanistic studies to contribute through an increasing knowledge of the history of cultural development to that gradual removal of prejudices which is the common aim of all science. — Niels Bohr

Dante can be understood only within the context of Italian thought, and Faust would be unthinkable if divorced from its German background; but both are part of our common cultural heritage. — Gustav Stresemann

People are not two-thirds one thing and the remainder something else. Temperament, personality, or outlook don't divide quite like that. The bits don't separate clearly. You end up a funny homogeneous mixture. This is something that will become more common in the latter part of the century - people with mixed cultural backgrounds, and mixed racial backgrounds. That's the way the world is going. — Kazuo Ishiguro

It's unfortunate that the concept of Bharat - the common abode and cultural heritage of us Indo-Aryans - has been subjugated by petty rulers and kingdoms. Our scriptures, traditions, culture, prayers, and deities are common. Why is it, then, that we refer to our homes as Magadha, Gandhar, Kashi, Kuru, Kosala, Mallayrajya or Panchala? Why don't we say that we're citizens of Bharat? It's this fundamental divisiveness that will bring about our downfall in the future,' debated Chanakya — Ashwin Sanghi

It's common for cultural shifts to start with young, urban adopters before going mainstream. — Lynn Jurich

The practice of invoking the myths and cultural practices of native cultures to give moral support to practices within our current culture is an increasingly common phenomenon. Thus, many people cite the example of native cultures to defend their habit of meat-eating. The act of wrenching a narrative out of the context of one culture and grafting it onto another is not only disrespectful and self-serving, it is an act of violence in its own right. — Marti Kheel

A culture is much more than politics. It is a national identity encompassing education, fine and popular arts and entertainment, science, physical and mental health, leisure activities, friend and family relationships, values, ambitions. . .everything that constitutes the basic shared core values of any country. In our case, the core value of individualism has been the common denominator linking all other aspects of our cultural distinctiveness; it is what makes The United States "America." Viable only where Liberty reigns, valuing the sovereignty of individuals is precisely what makes America exceptional; therefore, it is the culture that warrants attention because the actual, underlying disease invading the mental health of our country has arisen not from the government directly but from the injection of deleterious ideas into our entire individualistic social-economic system. Proposals — Alexandra York

If everything was determined
by the common human condition, by social and cultural categories, and by chance, it would be useless to reflect on ways to make one's life excellent. Fortunately there is enough room for personal initiative and choice to make a real difference. And those who believe this are the ones with the best chance to break free from the grip of fate. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban masses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions. — C. Wright Mills

Every meaningful cultural act
wherever it takes place
is unquestionably good in and of itself, simply because it exists and because it offers something to someone. Yet can this value 'in itself' really be separated from 'the common good'? Is not one an integral part of the other from the start? Does not the bare fact that a work of art has meant something to someone
even if only for a moment, perhaps to a single person
already somehow change, however minutely, the overall condition for the better? ... Can we separate the awakening human soul from what it always, already is
an awakening human community? — Vaclav Havel

This Western culture of ours tends to sacrifice the full range of experience to a lower common denominator that's acceptable to more people; we end up with McDonald's instead of real food, Holiday Inns instead of homes, and USA Today instead of news and cultural analysis. And we do that with the rest of our lives. — Kate Bornstein

The arts have long been an integral and vibrant part of our nation's cultural heritage. In its many forms, art enables us to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and of our society. Providing us with a unique way to learn about people of other cultures, it allows us to discover all that we have in common. At its best, art can beautify our cities, encourage economic development and social change, and profoundly affect the ways we live our lives. — William J. Clinton

I spent the first years working in Jordan trying to learn as much as I could about what was taking place in the country, about where there were gaps in the development process that needed attention. Inevitably, there were certain common denominators which are fairly common to all developing societies, perhaps to all societies: that quality education be accessible to everyone, not just a limited elite few; the sustainable conservation of natural resources; the full engagement of women in national development; and the value of cross-cultural exchange and understanding to international relations. — Queen Noor Of Jordan

Communion in faith, in the intimacy of meaning, cannot remain purely conceptual; it can maintain its vivifying energy only if it associates with communion in speech and action within a common space of social and cultural references. Faith needs culture. — Tariq Ramadan

To be a photographer is to become aware of visible appearances and at the same time acquire from them an education in individual and common optical aperception. Why? Because every individual sees in his own way but see little more than images shaped by the cultural standards of a given period. — Raoul Hausmann

Through the Spirit, Jesus Christ the exalted one generates a new mode of common human life, the life of the Church. To participate in that common human life, hearing the gospel in fellowship under the word of God and living together under the signs of baptism and the Lord's supper, is to exist in a sphere in which God's limitless power is unleashed and extends into the entirety of human life: moral, political, cultural, affective, intellectual. Reason, like everything else, is remade in the sphere of the Church; and theological reason is an activity of the regenerate mind turned towards the gospel of Jesus Christ, which constitutes the Church's origin and vocation. — John Webster

Without an understanding of common grace, Christians will believe they can live self-sufficiently within their own cultural enclave. Some might feel that we should go only to Christian doctors, work only with Christian lawyers, listen only to Christian counselors, or enjoy only Christian artists. Of course, all non-believers have seriously impaired spiritual vision. Yet so many of the gifts God has put in the world are given to nonbelievers. Mozart was a gift to us - whether he was a believer or not. So Christians are free to study the world of human culture in order to know more of God; for as creatures made in His image we can appreciate truth and wisdom wherever we find it. — Timothy Keller

It is quite clear that as long as the nations of the world spend most of their energy, money, and emotional strength in quarreling with words and weapons, a true offensive against the common problems that threaten human survival is not very likely. A world government that can channel human efforts in the direction of the great solutions seems desirable, even essential. Naturally, such a world government should be a federal one, with regional and local autonomy safeguarded and with cultural diversity promoted. — Isaac Asimov

What we mean when we say that something is "cultural" is that it is roughly similar to what we find in other members of the particular group we are considering, and unlike what we would find in members of a contrast group. This is why it is confusing to say that people share a culture, as if culture were common property. We may have strictly identical amounts of money in our respective wallets without sharing any of it! — Pascal Boyer

I'm the type of individual that I enjoy watching any different cultural lives, and I see the common humanity even though the hair textures are different or the skin tones are varied. — Angela Bassett

The trick, and it's a tough one, is a common cultural understanding of what kind of failure is okay and what kind leads to disaster. But — Tom Peters

I was sure we would never see the adoption of the Euro. Countries giving up their currencies for a common tender was, it seemed to me, completely out of tune with currency being a carrier of people's cultural identity, celebrating national heroes and events, as it had been for hundreds of years. — John Naisbitt

Tower Records was a place to meet your friends, your co-workers or a place to meet new friends who shared a common love of music, literature and all things cultural. — Colin Hanks

Yet the freedom of the artist, the pure beauty of nature, and the liberty of each of us to live our lives as we choose are still under threat - and despite all our progress, this threat may be greater now than in many years. The slave religions have used the weapons of fear, guilt, superstition, greed, terror and paranoia to achieve significant gains in political, ideological, and cultural power during recent decades, notably in the forms of militant Islamic fundamentalism and Christian dominionism.

It takes strength to stand in defense of beauty, truth and freedom, and strength requires unity.

Even while we celebrate our diversity and individuality with justified exuberance, it is critical that we remember those principles we hold in common, and those things we owe to each other as brothers and sisters of this, our Holy Order. — Sabazius X

We are to hold accountable those on the inside, and speak to those on the outside with persuasion and mission.
We tend to do the exact reverse. We rail against the culture outside, and speak in muted and ambiguous terms about what is common among us. We lambaste political and cultural heresies on the outside, but sit silently in the face of doctrinal heresies in the inside. That's because we are seeing the wrong kingdom first. — Russell D. Moore

Some sort of belief in all-powerful supernatural beings is common, if not universal. A tendency to obey authority, perhaps especially in children, a tendency to believe what you're told, a tendency to fear your own death, a tendency to wish to see your loved ones who have died, to wish to see them again, a wish to understand where you came from, where the world came from, all these psychological predispositions, under the right cultural conditions, tend to lead to people believing in things for which there is no evidence. — Richard Dawkins

Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers. Even if that reality is patently invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged with gifts that support and promote the common cultural lies.
The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic systems. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident. It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy. — Chuck Palahniuk

He wonders if this is a lack within himself. Is there a part of the brain from which love comes that in his case has drastically malfunctioned? The world is awash in love - on the radio, in movies, in the pages of novels. Romantic love is the common cultural narrative, yet he seems immune to it. Thus, though he has yet to taste the pain that comes with love, he has experienced pain of a different, related sort: the fear of facing a life without it. — Justin Cronin

Organisations often appoint leaders for their IQ. Then, years later, sack them for their lack of EQ (Emotional Intelligence). Common Purpose argues that in the future they will promote for CQ - Cultural Intelligence. — Julia Middleton

The great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class. After all, you can hardly deride liberals as society's "elite" or present the GOP as the party of the common man if you acknowledge the existence of the corporate world the power that creates the nation's real elite, that dominates its real class system, and that wields the Republican Party as its personal political system. — Thomas Frank

Older plants send out volatiles to younger plants that contain within them information about chemical responses to predation. A bean plant, being fed upon by a spider mite, can analyze from its saliva just what type of spider mite is feeding on it. It then will craft a specific pheromone, releasing it from its leaf stomata as a volatile chemical into the air. That pheromone will call to the plant the exact predator that feeds on that particular spider mite. Older plants store this information as a kind of cultural learning that is then passed on to younger generations. Old growth plants are repositories of the acquired learning of the species. Cultural learning and transmission is, in reality, common throughout the Gaian system. Chimpanzees teach their young to collect termites with a stick, and how to make the stick. — Stephen Harrod Buhner

As we progress along the intercultural journey, we become self-reflective about habits of heart and mind and the ways these are expressed in daily life. We develop strategies for encountering change, unfamiliarity and ambiguity in creative ways. We begin to realize that what is taken, as "common sense" is really "cultural sense". Our life becomes richer and deeper for having encountered differences. — H. Ned Seelye

Common sense is a very poor guide to scientific insight for it represents cultural prejudice more often than it reflects the native honesty of a small boy before the naked emperor. — Stephen Jay Gould

As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change - that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments. — Richard Rorty

The language of the culture also reflects the stories of the culture. One word or simple phrasal labels often describe the story adequately enough in what we have termed culturally common stories. To some extent, the stories of a culture are observable by inspecting the vocabulary of that culture. Often entire stories are embodied in one very culture-specific word. The story words unique to a culture reveal cultural differences. — Roger Schank

Falling in love. A strange phrase, so common as to be nearly useless, a kind of semantic saturation on a cultural level. It was only when you felt yourself falling in love and thought about how that felt and what it meant that the phrase took on meaning, letting you really comprehend the accuracy of the description. — Jasinda Wilder

It is really one of the most serious faults which can be found with the whole conception of democracy, that its cultural function must move on the basis of the common denominator. Such a point of view indeed would make a mess of all of the values which we have developed for examining works of art. It would address one end of education in that it would consider that culture which was available to everyone, but in that achievement it would eliminate culture itself.
This is surely the death of all thought.
This quote is taken from "The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art" by Mark Rothko, written 1940-1 and published posthumously in 2004 by Yale University Press, pp.126-7. — Mark Rothko

In a world of diversity, and cultural differences ... there's no such thing as 'common' sense. — Carla VanKoughnett

A nation is born into freedom on the day when such a people, moulded into a nation by a process of cultural evolution and sense of oneness born of common struggle and suffering, announces to the world that it asserts its natural right to liberty and is ready to defend it with blood, life, and honor. — Diosdado Macapagal

In the ancient Near East, circumcision was practiced by most of the nations. Here God radically changes, for his own people, the meaning of this common cultural practice. — Craig G. Bartholomew

We -- the industrialized, technologized world -- have never been richer. And yet to an extraordinary extent we in the West continue to inhabit a moral and cultural universe shaped by the hedonistic imperatives and radical ideals of the Sixties. Culturally, morally the world we inhabit is increasingly a trash world: addicted to sensation, besieged everywhere by the cacophonous, mind-numbing din of rock music, saturated with pornography, in thrall to the lowest common denominator wherever questions of taste, manners or intellectual delicacy are concerned. Marwick was right: 'The cultural revolution, in short, had continuous, uninterrupted, and lasting consequences'. — Roger Kimball

Almost everything that gets called "universal truth" or "common sense" is actually cultural. And too easily twisted into justifications for all kinds of behavior. — Greg Saunier

I would say that introverts make some of the best international philosophers. The less common attribute of the introverted lifestyle - a close societal connection, as such a connection disappears or changes in relevance as the currents of the winds change - leaves too much room for one's own cultural bias. Instead, introverts tend to turn inward, the laboratory of being and all its forms. This is the most accurate study of the individual human being, which is in turn, rather than those affected by cultural limitations, the most universal reflection of human understanding and human behavior. — Criss Jami

Some series teach us that ethnic features must be "fixed," by drastic means if necessary. Plastic surgeons with questionable ethics give insecure women of all ethnicities boob jobs, liposuction, and face-lifts on shows such as Extreme Makeover, The Swan, and Dr. 90210, ignoring medical risks and reinforcing problematic ideas about women's worth. Yet they don't make white surgical candidates feel like their cultural identity should also be on the chopping blocking - or that they'd be so much more attractive and fulfilled if only they didn't look so... Caucasian.

In contrast, TV docs' scalpels reduce or remove racial markers on patients of colour. Black women's noses and lips are made smaller. In an increasingly common procedure targeting Asian women, creases are added to Asian women's eyelids. — Jennifer L. Pozner

We deem it opportune to remind our children of their duty to take an active part in public life and to contribute toward the attainment of the common good of the entire human family as well as to that of their own political community. They should endeavor, therefore, in the light of their Christian faith and led by love, to insure that the various institutions - whether economic, social, cultural or political in purpose - should be such as not to create obstacles, but rather to facilitate or render less arduous man's perfecting of himself in both the natural order and the supernatural.... Every believer in this world of ours must be a spark of light, a center of love, a vivifying leaven amidst his fellow men. And he will be this all the more perfectly, the more closely he lives in communion with God in the intimacy of his own soul — Pope John XXIII

Tribalism reflects strong ethnic or cultural identities that separate members of one group from another, making them loyal to people like them and suspicious of outsiders, which undermines efforts to forge common cause across groups. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Oppression porn - (1) The depiction of poverty, oppression, and/or despair with the intent of provoking moral arousal. Frequently appears as digital media, literature, and pseudo-immersive favela tours. The most common side effect is a dangerously inflated sense of national and/or cultural superiority. — T. Geronimo Johnson

A common language is a first step towards communication across cultural boundaries. — Ethan Zuckerman

Youth leaders, are you holding aloft our standards, or have you compromised them for the lowest common denominator in order to appease the deceived or vile within the Church? Are the dances and music in your cultural halls virtuous, lovely, praiseworthy, and of good report (Articles of Faith 13), or do they represent a modern Sodom with short skirts, loud beat, strobe lights, and darkness? — Ezra Taft Benson

Even if it is true that all cultures share a common morality, why does this prove a supreme intelligence? After all, don't we humanists sometimes claim that there is a common thread of humanistic values running through history across cultural and religious lines? — Dan Barker

One day in 1984, at the height of his fame, Michael Jackson made a visit to the White House. President and Nancy Reagan may not have dug his music, but they understood the power Mr. Jackson commanded as a common pop-cultural touchstone for just about everyone else. — Monica Crowley

Although the natural rights inherent in our( Constitutional) regime are adequate to the solution of this ( minority) problem ... the equal protection of the law did not protect a man from contempt and hatred as a Jew, an Italian or a Black" ... " 'Openness' was designed to provide a respectable place for those groups or minorities
to wrest respect from those who were disposed to give it
This breaks the delicate balance between majority and minority in Constitutional thought. In such a perspective where there is no common good, minorities are no longer problematic and the protection of them emerges as THE central function of government. — Allan Bloom