Culture Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

All the marvels of science and the gains of culture belong to the nation as a whole, and never again will man's brain and human genius be used for oppression and exploitation.

A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.

Friedrich Nietzsche

We know nothing about Africa, although our roots are there in terms of our forbearers. But I mean as far as the average Negro today, he knows nothing about Africa. And I think he's got to face the fact that he is an American, his culture is basically American, and one becomes adjusted to this when he realizes what, what he is.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours,
Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children,
as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned
from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively
an interaction of man on man.

Henry David Thoreau

Our self-esteem and conceit are European, but our culture and actions are Asiatic.

In order to develop a new culture, work must acquire a new status. Human beings-as-commodities cease to exist, and a system is installed that establishes a quota for the fulfillment of one's social duty. The means of production belong to society, and the machine is merely the trench where duty is performed.

A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.

Henry David Thoreau

The land is the appointed remedy for whatever is false and fantastic in our culture...food for our mind, as well as our body.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Culture in its higher forms is a delicate plant which depends on a complicated set of conditions and is wont to flourish only in a few places at any given time.

Albert Einstein

All the same, they [books] do serve some purpose. Culture doesn't save anything or anyone, it doesn't justify. But it's a product of man: he projects himself into it, he recognizes himself in it; that critical mirror alone offers him his image.

Jean-Paul Sartre

The writer in America isn't part of the culture of this country. He's like a fine dog. People like him around, but he's of no use.

William Faulkner

I have a message for the terrorists trying to kill our citizens: we will find you, we will destroy you, and we will win. This is not only a military fight, but we will also require cyberwarfare and financial warfare. It is also an ideological fight. We will confront directly the hateful ideology of Radical Islam — and promote American values, and American culture, and America's system of government.

A cheerful intelligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. For it indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I think one can live in American society with a certain cultural heritage, whether it's an African heritage or other, European,what have you, and still absorb a great deal of this culture. There is always cultural assimilation.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself.

The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell.

Henry David Thoreau

The Negro is the child of two cultures - Africa and America. The problem is that in the search for wholeness all too many Negroes seek to embrace only one side of their natures.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

John F. Kennedy

The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metropolitan life, and that these few are alone to be regarded,--the escape from all false ties; courage to be what we are; and love what is simple and beautiful; independence and cheerful relation, these are the essentials,--these, and the wish to serve,--to add somewhat to the well-being of men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A sign of a culture that has lost its faith - Moral collapse follows upon spiritual collapse.

The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.

G. K. Chesterton

Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.

Friedrich Nietzsche

India has the right, if she only knew, of becoming the predominant partner by reason of her numbers, geographical position and culture inherited for ages.

The culture of life means respect for nature and protection of God's work of creation. In a special way it means respect for human life from the first moment of conception until its natural end.

Pope John Paul II

We belong to an age whose culture is in danger of perishing through the means to culture.

Friedrich Nietzsche