Great Cultures Quotes & Sayings

From some Christians as far back as the twelfth century, certainly from farther back in so-called primitive cultures, and from some ecologists of our own time, we have the idea of a great kindness including and binding together all beings: the living and the nonliving, the plants and animals, the water, the air, the stones. All, ultimately, are of a kind, belonging together, interdependently, in this world. From the point of view of Genesis I or of the 104th Psalm, we would say that all are of one kind, one kinship, one nature, because all are creatures. — Wendell Berry

This great, though disastrous, culture can only change as we begin to stand off and see ... the inveterate materialism which has become the model for cultures around the world. — Arthur Erickson

Zen's greatest contribution is to give you an alternative to the serious man. The serious man has made the world, the serious man has made all the religions. He has created all the philosophies, all the cultures, all the moralities; everything that exists around you is a creation of the serious man. Zen has dropped out of the serious world. It has created a world of its own which is very playful, full of laughter, where even great masters behave like children. — Rajneesh

The absurd view that other communities, religions, races, cultures, states and nations, are somehow "less than" one's own comes from an underdeveloped consciousness and low self-esteem. Prejudice and supremacism reveal that people do not possess a balanced framework of compassionate independence and self respect. We do not belong to any national construct, or group thought-form, but in fact belong to our great and beautiful world, and to the entire universe, as free and unique conscious beings. Prejudice comes from insecurity and its spiritually infantile need of belonging. Out of the hobbled spirit of attachment, and the insecure need of belonging, come the gross judgments against those who do not belong. — Bryant McGill

This world has seen a great many civilizations. And many of them have survived for longer periods than ours up to the present. They were all as sure as we are today of having founded the first eternal civilization. We today differ from them in having our western civilization spread to embrace the entire planet, leaving no room on any continent for any other culture to take over if we fail. — Thor Heyerdahl

It's a great historical joke that when the Spanish met the Aztecs, it was a blind date made in serve-you-right heaven. At the time, they were the two most unpleasant cultures in the entire world, and richly deserved each other. Still, the story of how stout Cortes blustered, bullied and bludgeoned his way to collapsing an entire empire with a handful of contagious hoodlums is astonishing. — A.A. Gill

Looking for a good book to read and a great teacher to listen to? Here is a good book and here is a great teacher: Other cultures! To read this book and to listen to this teacher, all you need is to travel! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

As my visits with Morrie go on, I begin to read about death, how different cultures view the final passage. There is a tribe in the North American Arctic, for example, who believe that all things on earth have a soul that exists in a miniature form of the body that hold it -so that a deer has a tiny deer inside it, and a man has a tiny man inside him. When the large being dies, that tiny form lives on. It can slide into something being born nearby, or it can go to a temporary resting place in the sky, in the belly of a great feminine spirit, where it waits until the moon can send it back to earth.
Sometimes, they say, the moon is so busy with the new souls of the world that it disappears from the sky. That is why we have moonless nights. But in the end, the moon always returns, as do we all.
That is what they believe. — Mitch Albom

When Europeans arrived on this continent, they blew it with the Native Americans. They plowed over them, taking as much as they could of their land and valuables, and respecting almost nothing about the native cultures. They lost the wisdom of the indigenous peoples-wisdom about the land and connectedness to the great web of life ... We have another chance with all these refugees. People come here penniless but not cultureless. They bring us gifts. We can synthesize the best of our traditions with the best of theirs. We can teach and learn from each other to produce a better America ... — Mary Pipher

I've had people ask me to come and work for them. I went to Vienna and did three scenes in a movie for a guy that I met at a retrospective of Cassavetes films. It's a great way to travel, to meet people, to see different countries and cultures. — Seymour Cassel

I speak of a Canada where men and women of aboriginal ancestry, of French and British heritage, of the diverse cultures of the world, demonstrate the will to share this land in peace, in justice and with mutual respect. — Pierre Trudeau

I think that we're making a mistake if we don't see that there is a cultural basis to many illnesses, not just psychiatric ones. Breast cancer would be one prevalent example right now, different kind of cultures surrounding it. If you don't understand the cultural meaning of an illness like that you're going to miss the boat even if you're a great scientist. — Jonathan Michel Metzl

How would anyone believe that any good was to be obtained by adding the Balkan states to the already unwieldy Dual Monarchy and so increasing the Empire to a hundred million souls with differing cultures and traditions? Of course armies could be recruited and young men could die, but great States evolved only through centuries of social tradition and mutual self-interest; they were not imposed by bayonets. To believe the contrary would be as mad as the folly which had put the Archduke Maximilian on the throne of Mexico. — Miklos Banffy

Traveling and other cultures provide me with great inspiration, especially unusual people and cultures totally unlike my own. They generate many new ideas for me. — Kansai Yamamoto

Four months filming in a foreign country. You know, it is great because you get to learn all about different cultures. I feel so much more enriched. — Michelle Trachtenberg

From the perspective of the plan of salvation, one of the most serious abuses of children is to deny them birth. This is a worldwide trend. The national birthrate in the United States is the lowest in 25 years,2 and the birthrates in most European and Asian countries have been below replacement levels for many years. This is not just a religious issue. As rising generations diminish in numbers, cultures and even nations are hollowed out and eventually disappear.
One cause of the diminishing birthrate is the practice of abortion. Worldwide, there are estimated to be more than 40 million abortions per year.3 Many laws permit or even promote abortion, but to us this is a great evil. — Dallin H. Oaks

Increasingly we live in a world of concrete, tarmac, television, and computer screens. These are great mechanical and electronic constructs of the human intellect--but they blot out our view of the rising and setting sun and keep our feet from being grounded in the earth, which in many cultures is a sacred act of communion — Martin Lockley

Like the other great revolutions, an environmental revolution will require sacrifices and lead to enormous gains. It, too, will change the face of the land and human institutions, hierarchies, self-definitions, cultures. It will take centuries. If it happens. There is no guarantee, of course. — Donella Meadows

In a world of democracies, in a world where the great projects that have set humanity on fire are the projects of the emancipation of individuals from entrenched social division and hierarchy; in such a world individuals must never be puppets or prisoners of the societies or cultures into which they have been born. — Roberto Unger

I do think stories are one of the best tools for communicating across any number of cultures. But I also think there are wildly successful leaders who are introverted, disciplined, lead via spreadsheets and goals, and might not "appear" to be a great leader ... but in retrospect, made a massive impact. — David Livermore

William Carey chides his countrymen for deciding it would be impossible for the Gospel to travel over great distances and to penetrate varied cultures when they are willing to face the same trials for the sake of commerce. — William Carey

Perhaps one of my biggest lessons was learning the healthy difference between passive, aggressive, and assertive characteristics of behavior. I think this is one of the great balances necessary for healthy individuals and cultures, and I have considered it carefully. To be passive means you don't stand up for your own rights. To be aggressive means that you stand up for your rights while not honoring the rights of others. Both of these patterns of unhealthy behavior were dominant in our society, with men and women in substantial measure and in all of their relationships. What was missing was assertiveness, as it was predominantly programmed right out of us. Assertiveness means that you stand up for your rights while honoring the rights of others. It is difficult to be manipulated or to manipulate others when you are genuinely assertive, so that was why it was a danger in a culture built on manipulation. — Rebecca Musser

New York feels like a sublet of Europe. And Europe is a sublet of New York. Put it that way. It's so accessible. When I was in LA, I felt so far away from my home. Home, for the moment, is here until it's not. I like to move around with my work. I feel it's a great way to learn about life, about new cultures, and to learn. We'll see where the wind takes me. — Sean Mahon

Our ingenuity in feeding ourselves is prodigious, but at various points our technologies come into conflict with nature's ways of doing things, as when we seek to maximize efficiency by planting crops or raising animals in vast mono-cultures. This is something nature never does, always and for good reasons practicing diversity instead. A great many of the health and environmental problems created by our food system owe to our attempts to oversimplify nature's complexities, at both the growing and the eating ends of our food chain. — Michael Pollan

I can remember saying again and again and again, "A terrible thing has happened, but this should be a kind of wake-up call for our country, and we have a great opportunity now to reinvent ourselves. To rethink our position about oil and energy, to rethink our relationship with other cultures and other countries, and why other people want to attack us." — Paul Auster

Well, if you look at all of the cultures in America, this is a great opportunity for us to really get acquainted with the rest of the world. America is the only place you can do that, but we don't have sense enough to take advantage of that. — Erykah Badu

Food is an intimate language that everyone understands, everyone shares. It is the primary ambassador of first contact between cultures, one that transcends spoken language. Food crosses cultural barriers. It bridges oceans. Becoming competent in a foreign language takes a lot of time, and learning a culture's history and literature requires a great deal of effort. But everyone can immediately have an opinion on food. — Jennifer 8. Lee

Throughout history, people in all cultures and lands have gathered together at mealtimes. In forests and mountains, in humble abodes and great mansions, beneath star filled skies and beside hearths, people have given thanks, and offered their blessings. — John Robbins

Tahiti has been spoiled for many years, but Bali is one of the few cultures with origins in one of the great ancient cultures which is still alive. — Arthur Erickson

The resulting amalgam - an exotic mixture of European, Caribbean, African, and American elements - made Louisiana into perhaps the most seething ethnic melting pot that the nineteenth century world could produce. This cultural gumbo would serve as breeding ground for many of the great hybrid musics of modern times; not just jazz, but also cajun, zydeco, blues, and other new styles flourished as a result of this laissez-faire environment. In this warm, moist atmosphere, sharp delineations between cultures gradually softened and ultimately disappeared. — Ted Gioia

Leaders must embrace those they need the most versus holding them hostage. — Curt Coffman

You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country
indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky
provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut ...
... Other cultures have camped here a while and disappeared. Only earth and sky matter. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light. You begin to see that God does not owe us much beyond that. — Annie Proulx

The thing I like most about acting is that it entertains people. Films and TV can also offer such comfort to people ... TV especially, because it's in people's homes and they can watch it at home. It offers them insights into different cultures and ideas, which I think is great. — Yasmin Paige

We are men and women from many lands, representing a rich variety of cultures. And we have been brought together to work in a great common cause: the survival and progress of mankind. The concept of unity in diversity ... underlies our various pursuits at the United Nations. — Kurt Waldheim

With our music, and music that we popularize, we try to reach out and remind people that, when taken out of the hands of a parasite, music is still a great lead into a democratic atmosphere of chaos, where moments of great freedom and where great friends could be found. And that in the world of rapidly dissolving authentic cultures, soul-searching through the music is something that connects you with the most authentic thing there - your savage heart. — Eugene Hutz

My dream was to ride a horse from Mongolia to Hungary, 10,000 km across the great Eurasian Steppe, and in doing so, come to understand the nomadic cultures that have presided there for thousands of years. — Tim Cope

Very few Black people ever embraced back to Africa movements, and very few actually, a tiny number actually went back to Africa. They said, "We are going to make America live up to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States." They produced one of the world's great cultures; they produced individuals who were just as brilliant and made contributions to the world civilization. In fact, they produced a world-class civilization, the African American civilization, in music, in dance, in oratory, in religion, in writing. — Henry Louis Gates

The great joy of doing 'The Daily Show' for me is that I get to sit on the fence between cultures. I am commenting on the absurdity of both sides as an outsider and insider. Sometimes I'm playing the brown guy, and sometimes I'm not, but the best stuff I do always goes back to being a brown kid in a white world. — Aasif Mandvi

The first time I started listening to Irish music, I had a very strong connection. Strangely enough, there's a great many Japanese melodies and vocal styles that sound very much like Hungarian music. You start seeing all these cross-references and comparative, independent musical cultures. — Tom Waits

I've always wanted to do things differently, and if one person or ten people are doing the same, then I want to do it differently. I love to travel, I love art, I love fashion. I love going to great restaurants and trying different things. Different cultures are inspiring to me. — Molly Sims

Kenya is rapidly developing its industry and manufacturing, and its cultural identity as a new country. We had a humongous history pre-British, and when we were colonized and violently reshuffled, we had to decide who we were again. We couldn't rest on the stories and the cultures of our great-grandparents. — Wangechi Mutu

What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation.
When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace. — John O'Donohue

There is a beginning and end to all life - and to all human endeavors. Species evolve and die off. Empires rise, then break apart. Businesses grow, then fold. There are no exceptions. I'm OK with all that. Yet it pains me to bear witness to the sixth great extinction, where we humans are directly responsible for the extirpation of so many wonderful creatures and invaluable indigenous cultures. It saddens me to observe the plight of our own species; we appear to be incapable of solving our problems. — Yvon Chouinard

I mix everything up. A museum curator once said to me that there is a great jazz component to the way I do things because good jazz is improvisation and draws elements from all different cultures. And that's the way I do everything - the way I dress and decorate. — Iris Apfel

Liberalism is the party of upstarts who have insinuated themselves between the people and its big men. Liberals feel themselves as isolated individuals, responsible to nobody. They do not share the nation's traditions, they are indifferent to its past and have no ambition for its future. They seek only their own personal advantage in the present. Their dream is the great International, in which the differences of peoples and languages, races and cultures will be obliterated. — Arthur Moeller Van Den Bruck

Cultural diversity and cultural change are desirable and inevitable. We are cultural animals, someone without a culture is not human. But the cultures we possess vary enormously. Indeed, the variability, over time and space is the great evolutionary advantage of humanity. Instead of changing biologically over millennia, human beings can change culturally over decades — Martin Wolf

Friendship is no ideal state of mind; it is a law, and a strict one, on which the entire legal systems of great cultures were built. It reaches beyond personal desires and self-regard in men's hearts, its grip is greater than that of sexual desire, and it is proof against disappointment because it asks for nothing. — Sandor Marai

Childbirth takes place at the intersection of time; in all cultures it links past, present and future. In traditional cultures birth unites the world of 'now' with the world of the ancestors, and is part of the great tree of life extending in time and eternity. — Sheila Kitzinger

I simply think that there are things in this world that are relics. We have unsettling remnants of Atlantis. They have found things off Bermuda, great walls and things of that sort. This seems to indicate that there were races and cultures that went before us. And to me, that's an unsettling idea. — Stephen King

Great cultures share information daily, even hourly. — Adrian Gostick

It's still a great, big, beautiful, wonderful world no matter what the headlines of the newspapers are and it's there to be explored. It's there for our children to go out and explore and explore different cultures and learn from it. I never lose hope. — Liam Neeson

In Jump Time's developing hybrid world, capacities once nurtured in separate societies are available to the entire family of humankind. This is a stupendous happening, as important as the discovery of new continents during the time of the great sea journeys. For the first time in human history the genius of the human race is available for all to harvest. These rediscovered capacities may be evolutionary accelerators, now being gathered from many places, times, and cultures to awaken our species to who we are and what we yet may be and do. Often, however, it is not comfortable. We can for a time find ourselves strangers in a very strange land, wishing we could return to the comforts of a more insular and familiar worldview. Yet when we get beyond the shutterings of our local cultural trance, we gain the courage to nurture the emerging forms of the possible human and the possible society. — Jean Houston

Perhaps the single most powerful event facing humanity today is a great awakening on a planetary scale that has been millennia in the making. We humans are in the midst of a profound advance as a species to a higher form of global consciousness that has been emerging across cultures, religions and worldviews through the centuries. This awakening of global consciousness is nothing less than a shift, a maturation, from more egocentric patterns of life to a higher form of integral and dialogic patterns of life. — Ashok Gangadean

Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was talking about before, and I think our culture is strong on that. — Steve Ballmer

The great heroes of other ancient cultures were strong and clever and virtuous, but the great Jewish heroes copulated with slaves (Abraham), showed they were willing to allow others to have sex with their wives (also Abraham), cheated their brothers, seduced their in-laws, murdered, started civil wars through terrible family decisions, yet somehow-through a mixture of humility, near-insanity, and good fortune-served as conduits of God's action in the world. — William McDavid

The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends - gay and straight, male and female - had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy. — Peter Tatchell

Brand is how others see you, culture is how you see yourself. — Curt Coffman

A lot of Christian extremism has done a great deal to discredit religion; the main religious traditions have abandoned their own intellectual cultures so drastically that no one has any sense of it other than the fringe. — Marilynne Robinson

If you look at the great Westerns, and at Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology, they all contain elements in common: a harsh landscape; demons or outlaws trying to stop or kill the protagonist; and there are mythical legends at their core, innate in all cultures. — Simon Toyne

New Orleans has a unique history as a great melting pot of all kinds of cultures, and that manifests itself now through the food, the music, and the kinds of people who live there. — Scott Bakula

The classical heritage as shaped by and filtered through Roman culture had two great flaws. First, it prevented the very rich oral cultures of the ancient Mediterranean from surviving from antiquity into later times. All that was left as creative forces were Greek philosophy and Roman law. These were very substantial cultures but they represented a great narrowing of what could be passed on from antiquity to later centuries...
"Second, another deficiency of classical culture was its lack of social conscience, its obliviousness to the slavery, poverty, disease, and everyday cruelty endured by more than half of the fifty million people who inhabited the empire. The classical heritage represented a narrow and insensitive social and political theory reinforcing a miserably class-ridden and technologically stagnant society. — Norman F. Cantor

Great leaders create great cultures regardless of the dominant culture in the organization. — Bob Anderson

It is a proof of the divergence of the tendencies of the socialist and the bourgeois pictures of history - and from now on there will be two distinct historical cultures running side by side without ever really fusing - that people who have been brought up on the conventional version of history and know all about the Robespierrist Terror during the Great French Revolution, should find it an unfamiliar fact that the Terror of the government of Thiers executed, imprisoned or exiled more people - the number has been estimated at a hundred thousand - in that one week of the suppression of the [Paris] Commune [of 1871] than the revolutionary Terror of Robespierre had done in three years. — Edmund Wilson

I don't want to die ... I don't want to die poor. Two great motivators in the history of human cultures. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I'm inspired to write songs in many different ways - it can come from a melody, a word or phrase or something I have seen on my travels around the world. It's one of the great bonuses of my job in that I get to meet so many people and experience different cultures and it would be hard not to be inspired. — Chris De Burgh

What's great is that because math is such a universal language, really, our fans come in all shapes and sizes, all ages and genders and races and backgrounds and cultures. — David Krumholtz

The history of man is a graveyard of great cultures that came to catastrophic ends because of their incapacity for planned, rational, voluntary reaction to challenge. — Erich Fromm

In any organization of which I have played a leadership role, our trump card has never been great numbers but the way we worked with neighborhood people in conjunction with professionals in suits and ties. I want the Obama generation to try to understand this concept, and use it as a real yardstick for their ability to make change. My life personifies the straddling of two cultures: the world of Amherst and Yale and the world of Newark, New Jersey. As you will see, it is the power of the streets combined with the power of the suites that is the most effective mix for making things happen. Anybody who comes to you and says "we want change," without addressing the intersection of these two powerful forces in combination, is just whistling status quo. — Junius Williams

Sport is a great equalizer that can build bridges, transcend borders and cultures, and render even the fiercest conflicts temporarily irrelevant. — Richard Attias

Jesus never asked anyone to form a church, ordain priests, develop elaborate rituals and institutional cultures, and splinter into denominations. His two great requests were that we "love one another as I have loved you" and that we share bread and wine together as an open channel of that interabiding love. — Cynthia Bourgeault

The cultural significance of blue, on the other hand, is very limited. As noted earlier, blue is extremely rare as a color of materials in nature, and blue dyes are exceedingly difficult to produce. People in simple cultures might spend a lifetime without seeing objects that are truly blue. Of course, blue is the color of the sky (and, for some of us, the sea). But in the absence of blue materials with any practical significance, the need to find a special name for this great stretch of nothingness is particularly non-pressing. — Guy Deutscher

If we accept that we are all cut from the same genetic cloth, all cultures share the same genius. And whether that genius is placed into technological wizardry which has been our great achievement, or, by contrast, placed into the unraveling of complex threads of memory inherent in a myth is simply a matter of choice. — Wade Davis

Jerusalem is a festival and a lamentation. Its song is a sigh across the ages, a delicate, robust, mournful psalm at the great junction of spiritual cultures. — David K. Shipler

Like the United Nations, there is something inspirational about New York as a great melting pot of different cultures and traditions. And if this is the city that never sleeps, the United Nations works tirelessly, around the clock around the world. — Ban Ki-moon

Eighty percent of all cultures are the same, it is the 20% that make a culture unique and slam dunks the brand promise to the customer. — Curt Coffman

Authentic leadership is at the root of cultures of great innovation, engagement, outstanding client experiences, and growth. — Henna Inam

On three great bonds of love do all cultures depend: the love between man and woman in marriage; the love between a mother and her child; and the camaraderie among men, a bond that used to be strong enough to move mountains. The first two have suffered greatly; the third has almost ceased to exist. — Anthony M. Esolen

I've learned so much through life. Starting off in Asia, the cultures, the people you meet, the poverty you see. It's been a great education for me, and I've loved every minute of it. — Vijay Singh

Monarchs have a great weakness, however, for their own sons, no matter how feckless and inept. A statistical study should be done across cultures assessing the relative frequency of the bizarre outcomes to which monarchical succession is prone: failure to provide an heir or successor, provision of an heir completely inept, or division of rule among several incompatible ones. Orderly succession followed by a successful reign is the exception. — James J. O'Donnell

I got a great grandma. Her name is Pearl, and she was at one time married to an Indian chief, who, in a wonderful crossing of cultures, she integrated some of his, and some of hers, and um,
it was a combination of peyote and preserves, and it was this hallucinogenic jam. — Eddie Vedder

From earliest times, water has always been acknowledged as a primary human good and an indispensable natural resource. Around the great rivers of the world, like the Mississippi, great cultures have developed, while over the course of the centuries the prosperity of countless societies has been linked to these waterways. Today, however, the great fluvial systems of every continent are exposed to serious threats, often as a result of man's activity and decisions. — Pope Benedict XVI

Great cycles of history began with vigorous cultures awakening to the needs of children, but collapsing with frayed family ties. Have we failed to learn lessons which Ancient China, Greece and Rome learned too late - about day care and death houses for old folks? Do we without protest accept accelerating preschool and nursing home cultures which warn ominously that the earlier you institutionalize your child, the earlier he will institutionalize you! — Raymond S. Moore

To Muslims, I repeat that Islam is a great and noble religion but that all Muslims and Muslim majority societies did not in the past and do not now live up to this nobleness: critical reflection is required about faithfulness to our principles, our outlook on others, on cultures, freedom, the situation of women, and so on. Our contradictions and ambiguities are countless. To Westerners, I similarly repeat that the undeniable achievements of freedom and democracy should not make us forget murderous "civilizing missions," colonization, the destructive economic order, racism, discrimination, acquiescent relations with the worst dictatorships, and other failings. Our contradictions and ambiguities are countless. I am equally demanding and rigorous with both universes. — Tariq Ramadan

When it comes to dying and the risks of a bad death, does our responsibility as doctors override cultural values? Is it ever acceptable to bypass cultural norms and expectations in an attempt to get to the human truth? While in many cultures the tradition is to work through the family rather than talk directly to the patient during the dying process, the potential for harm is great, and patients may unintentionally be held hostage by their families. — Jessica Nutik Zitter

I love Caribbean food. It's a great melting pot of so many cultures including the Native Americans. — Bob Greene

Jesus used small things to describe his kingdom: a sprinkling of yeast that causes the whole loaf to rise, a pinch of salt that preserves a slab of meat, the smallest seed in the garden that grows into a great bush in which the birds of the air come to nest. Practices that used to be common - human sacrifice, slavery, duels to the death, child labor, exploitation of women, racial apartheid, debtors' prisons, the killing of the elderly and incurably ill - have been banned, in large part because of a gospel stream running through cultures influenced by the Christian faith. Once salted and yeasted, society is difficult to un-salt and un-yeast. Many — Philip Yancey

Sports was a great equalizer. It didn't have color. It didn't matter whether you were rich or poor, black or white. It really shaped me in many ways to be able to deal with a lot of different personalities and different cultures. Sports were the common thread. — Howard Schultz

World-history is the history of the great Cultures, and peoples are but the symbolic forms and vessels in which the men of these Cultures fulfil their Destinies. — Oswald Spengler

Wild foods, microbial cultures included, possess a great, unmediated life force, which can help us adapt to shifting conditions and lower our susceptibility to disease. These microorganisms are everywhere, and the techniques for fermenting with them are simple and flexible. — Sandor Katz

This age needs rather men like Shakespeare, or Milton, or Pope; men who are filled with the strength of their cultures and do not transcend the limits of their age, but, working within the times, bring what is peculiar to the moment to glory. We need great artists who are willing to accept restrictions, and who love their environments with such vitality that they can produce an epic out of the Protestant ethic.... Whatever the many failings of my work, let it stand as a manifesto of my love for the time in which I was born. — John Updike

Teachers still command great respect in the families and societies of many Asian cultures. — Andy Hargreaves

We humans, as species, are interested in communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. Would not a good beginning be improved communication with terrestral intelligence, with other human beings of different cultures and languages, with the great apes, with the dolphines, but particularly with those intelligent masters of the deep, the great whales? — Carl Sagan

An even more important intertribal gathering took place at the Grand Dalles of the Columbia River, the home territory of the Wishrams, Wascos, and other peoples. It was the most important point of contact between Coast and Plateau cultures. Here was the cosmopolitan center of Northwest Indian life, site of great month-long trade fairs analogous to those held in medieval Europe, a time for trading, dancing, ceremonial displays, games, gambling, and even marriages. The — Carlos A. Schwantes

As poets, we don't accept oppression; we are about a freedom of spirit, or whatever you want to call it. I think environmental concerns have to go to the deep place, so we speak from a place of great empathy for the planet - for the disadvantaged people, animals, places, cultures. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

It is not brains or intelligence that is needed to cope with the problems with Plato and Aristotle and all of their successors to the present have failed to confront. What is needed is a readiness to undervalue the world altogether. This is only possible for a Christian ... All technologies and all cultures, ancient and modern, are part of our immediate expanse. There is hope in this diversity since it creates vast new possibilities of detachment and amusement at human gullibility and self-deception. There is no harm in reminding ourselves from time to time that the "Prince of this World" is a great P.R. man, a great salesman of new hardware and software, a great electric engineer, and a great master of the media. It is his master stroke to be not only environmental but invisible for the environmental is invincibly persuasive when ignored. — Marshall McLuhan

In many other cultures, and certainly in the Eastern world, there's great value put on being, contemplating, and even withdrawing from the world at certain times or for certain periods of time. But we don't really have that in our culture, so it's difficult for many Westerners to learn how to sit down or lie down and just be quiet without going to sleep. We're just not trained to do it. — Shakti Gawain

In the late 20th century, it became possible to travel between cultures, between the old world and the new, with great ease. So when you go back, you take the changed person with you who, in turn, changes things that otherwise might have stayed the same. — Shyam Selvadurai

I like to borrow a metaphor from the great poet and mystic Rumi who talks about living like a drawing compass. One leg of the compass is static. It is fixed and rooted in a certain spot. Meanwhile, the other leg draws a huge wide circle around the first one, constantly moving. Just like that, one part of my writing is based in Istanbul. It has strong local roots. Yet at the same time the other part travels the whole wide world, feeling connected to several cities, cultures, and peoples. — Elif Shafak

Through our own creative experience we came to know that the real tradition in art is not housed only in museums and art galleries and in great works of art; it is innate in us and can be galvanized into activity by the power of creative endeavor in our own day, and in our own country, by our own creative individuals in the arts. We also came to realize that we in Canada cannot truly understand the great cultures of the past and of other peoples, until we ourselves commence our own creative life in the arts. Until we do so, we are looking at these from the outside. — Lawren Harris

I think the driving force for cultural evolution is this desire for groups to be splitting off and separating and forming subgroups insofar as the environment will allow it. We see great cultural diversity and large numbers of cultures per unit area in regions of the world in which the environment is really rich. — Mark Pagel