2,320 Culture Quotes

Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals.

If they had said that the sun or the moon had gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in creation than the words: 'Byron is dead!'

The portions of a woman which appeal to man's depravity Are constructed with considerable care.

Customs form us all, our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed beliefs; are consequences of our place of birth.

Imbued with the desire to secure for the German people the great religious, moral, and cultural values rooted in the two Christian Confessions, we have abolished the political organizations but strengthened the religious institutions.

One of our most important tasks will be to save future generations from a similar political fate and to maintain for ever watchful in them a knowledge of the menace of Jewry. For this reason alone it is vital that the Passion play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the times of the Romans. There one sees in Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry.

This pride of race is a quality which the German, fundamentally, does not possess. The reason for this is that for these last three centuries the country has been torn by internal dissension and religious wars and has been subjected to a variety of foreign influences, to the influence, for example, of Christianity-for Christianity is not a natural religion for the Germans, but a religion that has been imported and which strikes no responsive chord in their hearts and is foreign to the inherent genius of the race. (13th February 1945)

I am surprised to see that today everything that does not amount to surrender pure and simple to generalized capitalism, let us call it thus, is considered to be archaic or old-fashioned, as though in a way there existed no other definition of what it means to be modern than, quite simply, to be at all times caught in the dominant forms of the moment.

The Here-and-Now demands attention, is more present to us. We dismiss the inner world of our ideas as less important, although most of our immediate physical reality originated only in the mind. The TV, sofa, clock and room, the whole civilisation that contains them once were nothing save ideas.

The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach.

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.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

Today a new faith is stirring: the myth of blood, the faith that along with blood we are defending the divine nature of man as a whole.

I didn't say that the Jews are inferior. I didn't even maintain they are a race. I merely saw that the mixture of different cultures didn't work.

Andy Warhol: I think everybody should like everybody. Gene Swenson: Is that what Pop Art is all about? Andy Warhol: Yes, it's liking things.

During the 1960s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don't think they've ever remembered.

It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it.

Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.

I know no place at which an Englishman may drop down suddenly among a pleasanter circle of acquaintance, or find himself with a more clever set of men, than he can do at Boston.

The trouble with us is that the ghetto of the Middle Ages and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult.

I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.

History may never have all the facts, but history always has the last word.

I'm half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I'd be in a hell of a mess!

The body expresses our very being. The striving for beauty is inborn among the Aryan.

To us Germans everything is religion. What we do we do not merely with our hands and brains, but with our hearts and souls. This has often become a tragic fate for us.

Faust, the Ninth Symphony, and the will of Adolf Hitler are eternal youth and know neither time nor transience.

I read world literature and I read French romances in the originals. I had quite a profound knowledge - no, that sounds conceited, but I did have a profound interest in everything spiritual.

I hate the whole reluctant sex-symbol thing. It's such bull. You see these dudes greased up, in their underwear, talking about how they don't want to be a sex symbol.

The appropriation of radical thinking by lazy, self-obsessed hippies is a public relations disaster that could cost the earth.

If all had the same belief about all matters of religion, there would be only one religion in the world.

The sayings of Muhammed are a treasure of wisdom not only for Muslims but for all of mankind.

The basic Female body comes with the following accessories: garter belt, panti-girdle, crinoline, camisole, bustle, brassiere, stomacher, chemise, virgin zone, spike heels, nose ring, veil, kid gloves, fishnet stockings, fichu, bandeau, Merry Widow, weepers, chokers, barrettes, bangles, beads, lorgnette, feather boa, basic black, compact, Lycra stretch one-piece with modesty panel, designer peignoir, flannel nightie, lace teddy, bed, head.

'If you're against same sex marriage but you laugh your ass off to Will & Grace, FUCK YOU [holds up middle finger]. You are a hypocrite [pointing], and you're not allowed to pick and choose what you like from our culture, and leave behind the burden of inequality.'

A Korean reporter once asked me, 'Do you think your Korean parents are ashamed because you talk about what you talk about on stage?' I said, 'I don't think they're ashamed because they're Korean. I think any parents would be ashamed.'

Because I wasn't Asian enough - they decided to hire an Asian Consultant. Because I was fucking it up as an Asian. She would follow me around: 'Margaret! Use chopsticks! And when you are done eating, you can put them in your hair. Now you're wearing shoes which is something we don't do in the house. Now I'm just going to leave this abacus right here...'

There's a bar in Edinburgh called 'CC Bloom's.' CC Bloom is the name of the character that Bette Midler played in Beaches. That is the gayest thing I have ever heard in my entire life. That place should just be called 'Fuck Me In The Ass...Bar and Grill.'

I had a colonic irrigation in this clinic in Santa Monica, because people in Los Angeles cannot do anything for themselves, much less take a shit.

[on having a gay child] And the Three Wise Drag Queens would come, bearing gifts of 1000-thread count sheets, hair products by Frederic Fekkai, and a copy of the Immaculate Collection.

Were the destiny of woman thus exactly marked out, did she invariably retain the shelter of a parent's or guardian's roof till she married, did marriage give her a sure home and a protector, were she never liable to be made a widow, or, if so, sure of finding immediate protection from a brother or new husband, so that she might never be forced to stand alone one moment, and were her mind given for this world only, with no faculties capable of eternal growth and infinite improvement, we would still demand of her a far wider and more generous culture than is proposed by those who so anxiously define her sphere.

We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone, Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought, And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone - A higher charm than modern culture won, With all the wealth of metaphysic lore, Gifted to analyze, dissect explore.

She possessed more influence on the thought of American women than any woman previous to her time.

Coincidences, good and bad, contretemps, seals, ciphers, mottoes, omens, anniversaries, names, dreams, are all of a certain importance to her. Her letters are often dated on some marked anniversary of her own, or of her correspondent's calendar. She signalized saints' days, 'All-Souls,' and 'All-Saints,' by poems, which had for her a mystical value.

If our imagination is challenged to picture what Margaret Fuller would have been like had she remained in Boston, it is positively staggered at trying to conceive what would have been the career of the Marchioness Ossoli in America. The wreck of the Elizabeth deprived the cultural history of this country of what would surely have been an exciting chapter.

'Europe' in anything other than the geographical sense is a wholly artificial construct. It makes no sense at all to lump together Beethoven and Debussy, Voltaire and Burke, Vermeer and Picasso, Notre Dame and St Paul's, boiled beef and bouillabaisse, and portray them as elements of a 'European' musical, philosophical, artistic, architectural or gastronomic reality. If Europe charms us, as it has so often charmed me, it is precisely because of its contrasts and contradictions, not its coherence and continuity.

I was writing a lot of lyrics five or six years ago and the name Marilyn Manson, I thought really describes everything that I had to say, you know, male and female, beauty and ugliness, and it was just very American. It was a statement on the American culture, the power that we give to icons like Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson and since that's where it's always gone from there. It's about the paradox. Diametrically opposed archetypes and then good.

I hope that with our music we can inspire other people to be creative and to use their imagination, because it is something that is so lacking nowadays. You have virtual reality, MTV, video games and VCR's. Nobody really wants to think about things or create things. You have programs on a computer which will write a poem for you.

A Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle.

France is miserable because it is filled with Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable because they live in France.

I was surprised as anyone when T-shirts, jeans and leather jackets suddenly became symbols of rebellion. In the film there was a scene in which somebody asked my character, Johnny, what I was rebelling against, and I answered 'Whaddya got?' But none of us involved in the picture ever imagined that it would instigate or encourage youthful rebellion.

Another theme of the Wake that helps in the understanding of the paradoxical shift from cliche to archetype is 'pastimes are past times'. The dominant technologies of one age become the games and pastimes of a later age. In the twentieth century the number of past times that are simultaneously available is so vast as to create cultural anarchy. When all the cultures of the world are simultaneously present, the work of the artist in the elucidation of form takes on new scope and new urgency. Most men are pushed into the artist role. The artist cannot dispense with the principle of doubleness and interplay since this kind of hendiadys-dialogue is essential to the very structure of consciousness, awareness, and autonomy. (p.99)

Although meaningless in a tribal context, numbers and statistics assume mythic and magical qualities of infallibility in literate societies. (p.114)

The artist is the only person; his antennae pick up these messages before anybody. So he is always thought of as being way ahead of his time because he lives in the present. (1970)

My tastes are much more obscure than you think. The other day, this reporter asked me who my favorite Spice Girl was and I was like, 'I dunno, but ask me about percussion ensembles from Senegal'.

The Celts certainly have it [style] in a wonderful measure.

There is the world of ideas and there is the world of practice; the French are often for suppressing the one and the English the other; but neither is to be suppressed.

The notion of the free play of the mind upon all subjects being a pleasure in itself, being an object of desire, being an essential provider of elements without which a nation's spirit, whatever compensations it may have for them, must, in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters into an Englishman's thoughts.

The great apostle of the Philistines, Lord Macaulay.

Before Duplessis died, we'd all go to church and make our sign [of the cross], and a year later we didn't go to Mass any more. So we looked for another set of values, one that was all-enveloping, like the Church.

A nation is truly corrupt, when, after having by degrees lost its character and liberty, it slides from democracy into aristocracy or monarchy; this is the death of the political body by decrepitude.

Chicago is my favorite American city. ... I like all the museums. I love the Art Institute. I love all the theatre and the blues clubs and bars, and the people are so great. I think Chicago is the perfect blend of a big city with a Midwestern finish on it. Everybody is really nice but it is a sophisticated city. I love the park. I love the zoo. I love the lake. The whole thing.

My off-white poodle. She doesn't consider herself to be gay, but I have my hunch.

A lot of people come up to me and say, 'Oh God, I'm just like Karen, that's what they [tell me] at the office'. I'm like, 'You know what? The people in your office may not be giving you a compliment. You may be getting fired soon.'

I've said it before, The '80s were ours.

[to La Resistance]: 'I like French things.I like French fries, French toast, hell, I even like French's mustard'

I loved ECW, back in the days when it was run by a visionary, when it was owned by a true creative genius. Let's hear it for Stephanie McMahon. Long live the Alliance! Long live the Alliance!

I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the establishment... it's not what the Stones is about, is it? I don't want to step out on stage with someone wearing a fucking coronet and sporting the old ermine. I told Mick, 'It's a fucking paltry honour.'

The foundation of our religion is very strong. The material is strong as well, but the building itself was neglected for hundreds of years. As the plaster dropped down, none thought to replace it and none felt the need to reinforce the building. Quite the contrary: many foreign elements and interpretations, as well as empty beliefs, came along and damaged it still more.

I am not leaving a spiritual legacy of dogmas, unchangeable petrified directives. My spiritual legacy is science and reason. ... What I wanted to do and what I tried to achieve for the Turkish nation is quite evident. If those people who wish to follow me after I am gone take the reason and science as their guides they will be my true spiritual heirs.

We, all Turks, born-democrats by soul.

You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment & make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race.

I don't listen to anything on the radio but NPR and occasional oldies programs. I can't comment on the content or format of most commercial radio but I have read the statistics about the step-by-step deregulation of FCC rules that has allowed monopolies like Clear Channel to buy up massive shares of the airwaves. This has damaged our business (music) and our culture (American). The internet is offering bold alternatives but a transistor radio is only $25.00 and not everyone is hooked up through a computer and high speed connection.

It was England in the autumn; the sun was, by definition, something that only happened when it wasn't cloudy or raining.

'Live music is better! Bumper stickers should be issued!' - 'Union Man'

A little piece of Aldershot in Andalucia.

Poles and Germans have a common history of great scientists: Today we no longer perceive Copernicus, Hevelius, Schopenhauer and Fahrenheit as the property of one nation but as representatives of one transnational culture.

If people are going to come and live in this country they've got to be British, they've got to be loyal to Britain.

There are two Christmas traditions I've inherited from my mother. One is the feeling that Christmas isn't complete if you haven't got a ham as well as a turkey. It means that the leftovers are much better. And in a curious way, despite the fact that we're talking about Christmas and ham, it's a very Jewish thing to want to provide a huge spread. I always cook for eight, but make enough to feed 30...

You are not free. Myriad invisible hands hold your hands and direct them. When you rise in anger, a great-grandfather froths at your mouth; when you make love, an ancestral caveman growls with lust; when you sleep, tombs open in your memory till your skull brims with ghosts.

It is not you talking. Nor is it your race only which shouts within you, for all the innumerable races of mankind shout and rush within you: white, yellow, black. Free yourself from race also; fight to live through the whole struggle of man.

The division of Philosopher and Poet is only apparent, and to the disadvantage of both. It is a sign of disease, and of a sickly constitution.

I understand why people think we're gay. There isn't a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between women. So I get why people have to label it - how can you be this close without it being sexual?

It told us that death means something completely different to them. If you really believed that someone was perfect in heart... So righteous that to live another day could only cause them to be less perfect, then wouldn't it be a good thing for them if they were killed and taken directly into heaven?

He knew she meant it. Everyone knew she meant it, and everyone knew what she said was true. Everyone had know it for years.

Even in cultures where marriages are arranged by parents, you're never actually forbidden to fall in love with your mate.

In contemporary American culture, going to the psychiatrist means you're crazy. But going to a therapist means you're rich and stylishly uptight. I hate it when you talk about 'contemporary American culture' this and 'contemporary American culture' that.

Wreaking blood and carnage in the normal European Christian manner?

In the village where I live, in Sussex, we made our bonfire in the Vicarage paddock and every year, as soon as it was lit, the Vicar's cow would begin to dance. She danced while the flames rose up to the sky, she danced till the ashes were black and cold. And the next morning-it was always the same-the Vicar would have no milk for his breakfast. It is strange to think of a simple cow rejoicing at the saving of Parliament so many years ago.

This is the greatest honour I have ever received in my life. Peace has always been my greatest concern. Yet in my childhood I learned to love it. My mother-an exceptional, brilliant woman-used to speak to me about it when I was still a child, because in those years there were also a lot of wars. Moreover, I am Catalan. Catalonia had the first democratic Parliament much before than England. And it was in my country where there was a beginning of united nations. At that time-the eleventh Century-they met in Toluges-today in France-to speak about peace, because the Catalonian people of that time were already against war. That is why, the United Nations, which work only for the ideal of peace, are in my hearth, because everything relating to peace goes directly there.

I have not played the cello in front of an audience since long years but I think I must do it this time. I am going to play a melody from the Catalonian folklore: The singing of the Birds. Birds, when in the sky, go singing: Peace, peace, peace. And this is a melody that Bach, Beethoven and all great people would have admired and loved. And, in addition, it springs up from the soul of my country: Catalonia.