Cultural Differences Quotes

Put 'em who threaten possessions and power together with 'em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. Those who're touched, put 'em in asylums. Pack off old ones to 'senior communities,' nursing homes. Our children? Keep'em prisoner, baby-sitter as warden. School? Good for fifteen to twenty years. Army afterward. Liberated, we live in prison. No this, no that. Kill us before we die!

John Cage

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Cultural heritage define the uniqueness of individuals. Appreciate cultural diversity.

Lailah Gifty Akita

I know by my own experience how, from a stranger met by chance, there may come an irresistible appeal which overturns the habitual perspectives just as a gust of wind might tumble down the panels of a stage set - what had seemed near becomes infinitely remote and what had seemed distant seems to be close.

Gabriel Marcel

A phenomenon that might seem only backwards or silly when expressed at a social level becomes madness at the individual level.

Caitlín R. Kiernan

I understand the, um, difficulty the French expatriates might have, especially after projects in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. My heart goes out to you all.’ Katrina wished she could control that stupid smile that was aching to spread on her face as Luc Gautier became bright red. ‘But this is Chennai . . . South India. Not even your largest glass manufacturing facility with 1,000-tonne capacity per day will save you from being slapped.

Cécile Rischmann

Remember how I told you that a person’s conduct is the first hint we have of a person’s character. Sometimes that’s all we have a chance to see. Their conduct is a manifestation of their character. You agreed. Remember, Dr. King? That was going to be part of the speech, and that’s going to help out a lot of people—black and white—in the future if you include those words.

Glen Shuld

Fiction, if done right, can bridge cultural divides. Stories can be a footpath for a reader to step into another land and view its indigenous practices and beliefs through a local lens, instead of a telescope.

Nadia Hashimi

They play, said the old man. Every week the anglos play a game to celebrate who they are. He stopped, raised his cane and fanned the air. One of them whacks it, then sets off like it was a trip around the world, to every one of the bases out there, you know the anglos have bases all over the world, right? Well the one who whacked it runs from one to the next while the others keep taking swings to distract their enemies, and if he doesn't get caught he makes it home and his people welcome him with open arms and cheering.

Yuri Herrera

Sophia could just as well have gutted me. In Allah's name, I drank beer for you. I dismantled my entire value system of holding Allah's word above all for you. I reinterpreted my Islamic teachings to justify being with you.

Sam Wazan

I always feel myself being thrust back into loneliness when someone tells me it's cold on a hot day. It isn't good to talk so much about the weather — weather is a highly personal matter, and communication on the subject inevitably fails.

Yōko Tawada

Nabir came out to drive the children away, but she stopped him. "I like to be friendly she said." "But they are not your friends," said Nabir. "You don't know them." "Respect first," Nabir would have said if he could have explained, "friendship after.

Rumer Godden

It is not easy to be stranded between two worlds, the sad truth is that we can never feel completely comfortable in either world

Sharon Kay Penman

The Swedes have coined the term 'management by perkele' to portray the Finnish managerial approach. Instead of collectively pondering all the possible alternatives and letting every member of the staff from the cleaner to the MD voice their views, as the Swedes do, the Finns act swiftly and don't waste time on the decision-making process. If something isn't happening quickly enough, it is necessary for the top managers to slam their fists on the table and yell, 'Perkele!' Repeatedly, if necessary.

Tarja Moles

In WASP families, if you don't get along with someone, you have as little to do with them as possible. In Jewish families, you move next door, to make them as miserable as possible.

Doreen Orion

People from different cultures have different definitions for beauty. Isn't that sad to judge others with our standards... rather than appreciate them?

Mizuki Nomura

Irish and English are so widely separated in their mode of expression that nothing like a literal rendering from one language to the other is possible.

Robin Flower

Wherever you travel to, appreciate the culture and beauty of the place.

Lailah Gifty Akita

Growing a culture requires a good storyteller. Changing a culture requires a persuasive editor.

Ryan Lilly

Culture is the celebration of diversity. Let us therefore not deny our origin; but instead celebrate ours as a cultural mosaic not a tower of Babel , but a power of Babel

Ali A. Mazrui

Whereas, in the west, individuality and drive are considered positive qualities, they are not seen the same way, in Japan. In that country, if you are too much of a rugged individualist, it might actually indicate that you are a weak, unreliable character and that you are selfish, in a childish, willful kind of way.

Alexei Maxim Russell

Most of my important lessons about life have come from recognizing how others from a different culture view things.

Edgar H. Schein

We build this country ourselves every day and we have to be, in the most positive sense, totally unreal.

J.C. Villamere

For it is a fact that a man can be profoundly out of step with his times. A man may have been born in a city famous for its idiosyncratic culture and yet, the very habits, fashions, and ideas that exalt that city in the eyes of the world may make no sense to him at all. As he proceeds through life, he looks about in a state of confusion, understanding neither the inclinations nor the aspirations of his peers.

Amor Towles

These outlanders are peculiar, aren’t they?"Longbow smiled faintly. "They seem to think that we’re the peculiar ones. Their lives are very complicated, but we try our best to keep everything simple. I’m not sure exactly why, but that seems to offend them for some reason.

David Eddings

The more we claim to discriminate between cultures and customs as good and bad, the more completely do we identify ourselves with those we would condemn. By refusing to consider as human those who seem to us to be the most “savage” or “barbarous” of their representatives, we merely adopt one of their own characteristic attitudes. The barbarian is, first and foremost, the man who believes in barbarism.

Claude Lévi-Strauss

Thank God for immigrants. They're the only ones who have any personality left. They still allow themselves emotions, judgments, and all those qualities that we are "evolving" past. I don't know what they're saying, but I can tell they're speaking honestly.

Colin Quinn

By sabotaging logic, the common frame of reference, and the common language, we have removed a "safety valve" that allows cultural divides to be resolved.

Mike Klepper

Try seeing, feeling, and tasting the water you swim in the way a land animal might perceive it. You may find the experience fascinating -- and mind-expanding.

Erin Meyer

The Japanese have two words: "uchi" meaning inside and "soto" meaning outside. Uchi refers to their close friends, the people in their inner circle. Soto refers to anyone who is outside that circle. And how they relate and communicate to the two are drastically different. To the soto, they are still polite and they might be outgoing, on the surface, but they will keep them far away, until they are considered considerate and trustworthy enough to slip their way into the uchi category. Once you are uchi, the Japanese version of friendship is entire universes beyond the average American friendship! Uchi friends are for life. Uchi friends represent a sacred duty. A Japanese friend, who has become an uchi friend, is the one who will come to your aid, in your time of need, when all your western "friends" have turned their back and walked away.

Alexei Maxim Russell

The secrets of the kitchen were revealed to you in stages, on a need-to-know basis, just like the secrets of womanhood. You started wearing bras; you started handling the pressure cooker for lentils. You went from wearing skirts and half saris to wearing full saris, and at about the same time you got to make the rice-batter crepes called dosas for everyone’s tiffin. You did not get told the secret ratio of spices for the house-made sambar curry powder until you came of marriageable age. And to truly have a womanly figure, you had to eat, to be voluptuously full of food. This, of course, was in stark contrast to what was considered womanly or desirable in the West, especially when I started modeling. To look good in Western clothes you had to be extremely thin. Prior to this, I never thought about my weight except to think it wasn’t ever enough. Then, with modeling, I started depending on my looks to feed myself (though my profession didn’t allow me to actually eat very much). When I started hosting food shows, my career went from fashion to food, from not eating to really eating a lot, to put it mildly. Only this time the opposing demands of having to eat all this food and still look good by Western standards of beauty were off the charts. This tug-of-war was something I would struggle with for most of a decade.

Padma Lakshmi

We all have a book in us. The first step is recognising this. Writing it is a whole new journey.

Kathryn Joyce

Appreciation for cultural diversity is essential for our co-existence.

Lailah Gifty Akita

Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences, like love and weeping and laughter, common to all human beings.

Aberjhani

Van Uoc felt the stab of a sad truth: she and her mother would never be as close as her mother and grandmother had been.Her mother got up, stretched her tidy, graceful frame and headed for the kitchen. Van Uoc wanted to be able to offer her some comfort, but what could she say? Her mother was right. The two of them represented an irreconcilable cultural split. Distance between them was inevitable.

Fiona Wood

Peace and gladness in every home is a peace for the society, nation and the world.

Lailah Gifty Akita

How you look at it is pretty much how you'll see it

Rasheed Ogunlaru

American can mean anything you want it to mean. It can mean that you live in America. It can mean that you are privileged. Being American can also mean that you are diverse. In many ways, the title American is an oxymoron because one may look it on the outside but not feel it on the inside.

Ciore Taylor

My skin is beautiful but it also serves as a huge barrier for so many opportunities that I want to pursue in life.

Ciore Taylor

It’s unfortunate really—how everyone can live on the same soil yet not even know the first thing about their neighbors.

Ciore Taylor

Differences simply act as a yarn of curiosity unraveling until we get to the other side.

Ciore Taylor

In many ways, the title American is an oxymoron because one may look it on the outside but not feel it on the inside.

Ciore Taylor

Sometimes, the reason that people don’t get along is because they feel that their role is to be selfish or submissive—not understanding that American simply means understanding who we are so that we can help others do the same.

Ciore Taylor

Reality tries to disguise the fact that this society neglects to provide equal opportunity established by God and clarified in the Constitution. Whether equal opportunity is given to an individual or not, he/she still has the equal potential within him/herself to advance and obtain a greater level of success.

Ciore Taylor

I am living in world full of lost hope and discrimination. I am living a life in which social equality does not exist and I am not sure that it ever can, or if once upon a time it ever did.

Ciore Taylor

Often we may even smile or laugh at adversity, but all people share the same passions. They are merely manifest differently according to one's culture and conditioning.

Yasuo Kuwahara

When the purpose of clearly exposing the differences between the Aryan and the Tamil culture, civilization, conduct and creed Thirukkural was written. I am of that firm view.

Periyar E.V. Ramasamy

When our environment changes we change, and this combination of transformative deeds create a synergistic effect. Seemingly, insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes can eventfully lead to fundamental qualitative changes in the way a group of people function as a society.

Kilroy J. Oldster

In addition, when they talked as if city people lived by different values, they were not emphasizing abortion, or gay marriage, or the things that are typically pointed to as the cultural issues that divide lower-income whites from the Democratic Party. Instead, the values they talked about were intertwined with economic concerns.

Katherine J. Cramer

There is no religion better than love, no color better than the color of happiness and no language better than the language of compassion.

Abhijit Naskar

Harmony doesn’t come merely through tolerance. You don’t need to tolerate people from other cultural backgrounds. It is time you start loving them. Toleration may make you a decent person, but it is love that makes you a true human being.

Abhijit Naskar

We need no language to laugh

Janaki Sooriyarachchi

...I fell asleep and had a dream that a king was liquidated by a group of kind faces...

Maquita Donyel Irvin

Fantasy like thought that no man could rainJust let her reignRun wild with her unafraidOf any rain stormsThey only wash the mud away and make wayFor double rainbows and sunny days

Maquita Donyel Irvin

...I fell asleep and had a dream that a king was liquidated by a group of kind faces....

Maquita Donyel Irvin

Let us dedicate this new era to mothers around the world, and also to the mother of all mothers -- Mother Earth. It is up to us to keep building bridges to bring the world closer together, and not destroy them to divide us further apart. We can pave new roads towards peace simply by understanding other cultures. This can be achieved through traveling, learning other languages, and interacting with others from outside our borders. Only then will one truly discover how we are more alike than different. Never allow language or cultural traditions to come between brothers and sisters. The same way one brother may not like his sister's choice of fashion or hairstyle, he will never hate her for her personal style or music preference. If you judge a man, judge only his heart. And if you should do so, make sure you use the truth in your conscience when weighing one's character. Do not measure anybody strictly based on the bad you see in them and ignore all the good.

Suzy Kassem

Cultural Differences Quotes

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