Culture

Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate") is a term commonly used to indicate the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group, an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning, or an excellence of aesthetic taste in the arts and humanities, (also known as high culture).

• Remember, Art is the one vital medium of the coming culture.
  • Agni Yoga, Leaves of Morya’s Garden I, The Call, 333, (1924)

• Certainly life is beautiful. But heretofore it was judged by animal instinct, and that is why the beauty of life could not be pointed out. Egypt was of lofty culture, but it cannot be said that the present culture is lower. Culture used to be centered in the north of India, but only a limited class of people possessed knowledge. Castes—foolish mustiness—have hindered culture. Indeed, the Lord Buddha wished to abolish this caste foolishness. The Teaching of the Lord was imbued with joy.
  • Agni Yoga, Leaves of Morya’s Garden II, Illumination, p. 262, (1925)

• Without culture there can be no international agreement or mutual understanding. Without culture the people's understanding cannot embrace all needs of evolution. Therefore the Banner of Peace comprises all subtle concepts that will lead nations to the understanding of culture. Humanity does not understand how to manifest reverence for that which comprises immortality of spirit. The Banner of Peace will bring the understanding of this lofty significance. Humanity cannot flourish without the knowledge of the greatness of culture. The Banner of Peace will open the gates to a better future. When countries are on the way to destruction, then even those who are spiritually depleted must understand in what the ascent consists. Verily, salvation lies in culture. Thus, the Banner of Peace brings a better future.
  • Agni Yoga, Hierarchy, 331, (1931)

• The New Era can be built only by means of culture... Culture will be proclaimed as the one defense against disintegration. Nowadays one should strive only in this direction. Our Command is to miss no opportunity of reminding people about culture. Though We be regarded as fanatics on the subject, people will nevertheless harken and become accustomed to it. Thus We introduce brain patterns.
  • Agni Yoga, Fiery World I, 190, (1933)

• Culture is the common heritage of all humanity. Despite differences in customs, creeds, and languages, every act of culture is the possession of all mankind. The unification of the world through culture is the first step toward the transformation of all life. The objection may be raised that each nation has its own culture. You can answer that culture should not be confused with customs. The objectors will also insist that there are great differences in the written languages of the various countries. But in speaking of culture We have in mind not the alphabets or the style of expression but the intended meaning and ideas. Compare the finest creations of the various nations and you will see that the basic ideas are common to all. Thus, We can affirm that even in diversity there is a unifying international aspiration. It is a joyous fact that the essence of human nature strives toward perfection. Man ignores this ever-present impulse, and will even rebel against this prompting of his higher nature, yet deep within the recesses of his Chalice the seed of culture radiates! Sooner or later this seed will sprout; this is why everyone carries within himself a sense of his humanity.
  • Agni Yoga, Supermundane", 373, (1938)

• It might be said that the basic purpose of any culture is to maintain the ideal status quo. What creates differences among cultures and literatures is the way in which the people go about this task, and this in turn depends on, and simultaneously maintains, basic assumptions about the nature of life and humanity’s place in it. The ideal status quo is generally expressed in terms of peace, prosperity, good health, and stability.
  • Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Beacon Press. 1 September 1992. ISBN 978-0-8070-4617-3.  Chapter Two

• The cultural bias of the translator inevitably shapes his or her perception of the materials being translated, often in ways that he or she is unaware of. Culture is fundamentally a shaper of perception, after all, and perception is shaped by culture in many subtle ways. In short, it’s hard to see the forest when you’re a tree.
  • Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Beacon Press. 1 September 1992. ISBN 978-0-8070-4617-3.  Chapter Three

• The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world; and through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits.
  • Matthew Arnold, Preface to Culture and Anarchy (1869)

• Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.
  • Matthew Arnold, “Sweetness and Light,” Culture and Anarchy (1869), p. 7

• The very ideology of "cultural production" is antithetical to all culture, as is that of visibility and of the polyvalent space: culture is a site of the secret, of seduction, of initiation, of a restrained and highly ritualized symbolic exchange.
  • Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1981), p. 64

• In 16th-century Italy there lived Lodovico Gonzaga, a 16-year old seminarist who was very fond of playing ball. Once a certain priest passing by wondered if for a future priest the youth was too keen on his pursuit and asked him: "What would you do if you learned that in half an hour the end of the world was coming?" To which Lodovico replied: "I'd play on." According to the Russian thinker Georgy Fedotov, the importance of culture lies in precisely that: we go on playing ball on the verge of Doomsday.
  • Vladimir Barsky, Chromaticism (1996)

• Politics is downstream of culture.
  • Andrew Breitbart, as quoted in Courrielche: Conservatives' Next Frontier, Daily Wire

• The improvement of the soul consists in raising it above what is narrow, particular, individual, selfish, to the universal and unconfined. To improve a man is to liberalize, enlarge him in thought, feeling, and purpose. Narrowness of intellect and heart, this is the degradation from which all culture aims to rescue the human being.
  • William Ellery Channing, “Self-Culture” (1838)

• Culture suggests agriculture, but civilization suggests the city. In one aspect civilization is the habit of civility; and civility is the refinement which townsmen, who made the word, thought possible only in the civitas or city.
  • Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Chap. 1, p. 2
• Culture is at once the expression and the reward of an effort, and any system of civilization which tends to relax effort will suffer a corresponding depreciation of culture.
  • Georges Duhamel, In Defense of Letters (1937), p. 22

• Culture is all the things and ideas ever devised by humans working and living together.
  • Peter Farb, Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

• The astonishing cluster of them [geniuses] that appeared in Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. ...what changed was the culture, which allowed exceptional minds to flourish.
  • Peter Farb, Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

• To say that the invention "was in the air" or "the times were ripe for it" are just other ways of stating that the inventors did not do the inventing, but that the cultures did.
  • Peter Farb, Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

• In science, just as in art and in life, only that which is true to culture is true to nature.
  • Ludwik Fleck (1935/1979), Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. p. 35

• Religious ideas have sprung from the same need as all the other achievements of culture: from the necessity for defending itself against the crushing supremacy of nature.
  • Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (1927)

• Whoever controls the media — the images — controls the culture.
  • Allen Ginsberg, as quoted in Brain Power : Learn to Improve Your Thinking Skills‎ (1980) by Karl Albrecht, p. 6

• The way you sustain and improve upon a culture is by fostering a sense of gratitude for what is best about it. You celebrate the good in your story while putting the bad in the correct context.
  • Jonah Goldberg, "What’s So Great about Western Civilization" (19 April 2019), National Review.

• Remember, we live in a culture of immediacy. We live in a culture in which simplistic answers override more complicated answers. We live in a culture in which language is reduced to its bare bones. We live in a culture in which language is now in the service of violence.
  • Henry Giroux, as quoted in Henry Giroux on His Latest Book — The Terror of the Unforeseen — and How Neoliberal Capitalism Sets the Stage for Fascism (August 19, 2019), Media For Us.

• Culture is neither natural nor artificial, neither genetically transmitted nor rationally designed. It is a tradition of learnt rules of conduct which have never been ‘invented’ and whose functions the acting individuals usually do not understand. There is surely as much justification to speak of the wisdom of culture as of the wisdom of nature—except, perhaps, that, because of the powers of government, errors of the former are less easily corrected.
  • Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 3 : The Political Order of a Free People (1979), Epilogue: The Three Sources of Human Values

• When two cultures collide is the only time when true suffering exists
  • Hermann Hesse, as quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time‎ (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 456

• Culture is constituted by human labor, the aesthetic, and the spirit. In this regard, culture is an integrated way of life which shuns false dichotomies between sacred and so-called secular. Human labor denotes a mutuality between base and superstructure. The aesthetic argues for a norm grounded in internal beauty and ethical functionality. And the spirit is the vivifying thread woven throughout all of culture.
  • Dwight Hopkins "A Black Theology of Liberation," Black Theology, v. 3, n. 1, January 2005

• Our aim is to stop the life cycle of the enemy culture and replace it with our own revolutionary culture. This can be done only by creating perfect disorder within the cycle of the enemy culture's life process and leaving a power vacuum to be filled by our building revolutionary culture.
  • George L. Jackson, Blood in My Eye (1971)

• The disdain for culture expressed by Johst and Fanon is not identical, however. Both despise the deceit of culture, but for opposite reasons. For Johst, culture is in itself a fraud, the cheap talk of weaklings; for Fanon, culture deceives by reneging on its promises. Johst and the Nazis hated culture itself; Fanon hated its hypocrisy, a very different notion.
  • Russell Jacoby, The End of Utopia (1999), p. 35

• Wenn ich Kultur höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning!
  • Whenever I hear of culture ... I release the safety catch of my Browning!
    • Hanns Johst, Schlageter. Often misquoted as "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver", and misattributed to other National Socialist leaders.

• Genes are the ultimate source of culture.
  • James Patrick Kelly, Glass Cloud (1987), reprinted in Gardner Dozois (ed.), The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection, p. 266

• These expressions — "culture" and "civilization" — have to be used in their Continental sense to make the point clear. "Culture" is the sum of all products which represent a personal manifestation, like painting, poetry, religion, philosophy, and the humanities. "Civilization" is nonpersonal. It is the sum total of all efforts which contribute to the increase of comfort or "usefulness" in the practical sense. Bathtubs, dentists' tools, railways, and traffic regulations are products of civilization. […] Yet while civilization is basically lack of friction, smoothness, comfort, and material enjoyment we have to look at traditional Christianity as being something "uncomfortable." […] It is difficult to project into the frame of a comfortistic civilization the picture of Christ, hanging on the cross with a body convulsed by pain, the palms torn to shreds by the heavy nails, the hairs glued to the scalp by sweat and coagulated blood. It ought to be repeated again that culture is always "magnificent." […] Civilization is geocentric comfort. But culture, which must be bought by bitter suffering (there is neither art nor sanctity without suffering), points always toward heaven. And the ochlocratic millennium hell bent upon avoiding suffering will turn its back toward heaven.
  • Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, The Menace of the Herd (1943), pp. 36–37

• One aspect of a “throwaway” culture is the desire to look the other way when it comes to evils like euthanasia, best exemplified by the changing terminology.
  • Caroline Kurt, "No, Helping Your Family Commit Suicide Is Not Compassionate", The Federalist (November 7, 2023)

• We are our culture and tradition; If there is no culture or tradition we are no one
  • Tamerlan Kuzgov, as quoted in (August/September 2015), by Joey Saputo, Panoram Italia Magazine, p. 14

• Each form of the sacrosanct was regarded by members of the culture which gave rise to it as a revelation of the Truth.
  • André Malraux, in Voices of Silence [Les voix du silence] (1951), Pt. IV, Ch. V

• Our art culture makes no attempt to search the past for precedents, but transforms the entire past into a sequence of provisional responses to a problem that remains intact.
  • André Malraux, in Voices of Silence [Les voix du silence] (1951), Pt. IV, Ch. VII

• Culture would seem ... first and foremost, to be the knowledge of what makes man something other than an accident of the universe, be it by deepening his harmony with the world, or by the lucid consciousness of his revolt from it. ... Culture is the sum of all the forms of art, of love and of thought, which, in the course of centuries, have enabled man to be less enslaved.
  • André Malraux, quoted in Malraux : An Essay in Political Criticism‎ (1967) by David O. Wilkinson, p. 153

• Culture itself is neither education nor law-making: it is an atmosphere and a heritage.
  • H. L. Mencken, Minority Report (1956), p. 360

• The prestige of culture is among the major means by which powers of decision are made to seem part of an unchallengeable authority. That is why the cultural apparatus, no matter how internally free, tends in every nation to become a close adjunct of national authority and a leading agency of nationalist propaganda.
  • C. Wright Mills, "The Cultural Apparatus," in The Politics of Truth: Selected Writings of C. Wright Mills (2008)

• That is the secret of all culture: it does not provide artificial limbs, wax noses or spectacles—that which can provide these things is, rather, only sham education. Culture is liberation, the removal of all the weeds, rubble and vermin that want to attack the tender buds of the plant.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, as translated by R. J. Hollingdale

• Two cultures rarely comprehend each other, especially when one is waxing and the other waning. The weaker needs to copy the stronger.
  • Kate Pullinger, "A Kind of Desired Invasion" (short story) in My Life as a Girl in a Men's Prison (London: Phoenix, 1997), p. 73

• Our world is organized in large measure around groups with pervasive cultures.... membership of such groups... greatly affects one's opportunities.... If the culture is decaying, or if it is persecuted or discriminated against, the options and opportunities open to its members will shrink.
  • Joseph Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and Politics (1994), Clarendon Press.

• Culture binds men and women in a deeper way than political and even geographical borders—unless borders are the material expression of the culture of a nation that may have also organized itself in a state, which in this case is the visible manifestation of a national culture.
  • Marco Respinti, "Documenting the Horror. 3. Cultural Genocides", Bitter Winter (March 28, 2024)

• A culture is a total way of life. It embraces what people ate and what they wore; the way they walked and the way they talked; the manner in which they treated death and greeted the newborn.
  • Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Howard University Press. 1972. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-9501546-4-0. 

• In the hands of woman lies the salvation of humanity and of our planet... The mother suggests the first conscious thoughts to her child. She gives direction and quality to all his aspirations and abilities. But the mother who possesses no thought of culture can suggest only the lower expressions of human nature. But in her striving toward education, woman must remember that all educational systems are only the means for the development of a higher knowledge and culture. The true culture of thought is developed by the culture of spirit and heart. Only such a combination gives that great synthesis without which it is impossible to realize the real grandeur, diversity, and complexity of human life in its cosmic evolution. Therefore, while striving to knowledge, may woman remember the Source of Light and the Leaders of Spirit—those great Minds who, verily, created the consciousness of humanity. In approaching this Source, this leading Principle of Synthesis, humanity will find the way to real evolution.
  • Helena Roerich Letters I, (1 March 1929)

• Let your names be written down among the names of the great co-workers of evolution. What can be higher and more beautiful than cooperation for the General Good of the culture of nations!
  • Helena Roerich Letters I, (24 February 1930)

• Woman—mother and wife—witness of the development of man's genius, can appreciate the great significance of the culture of thought and knowledge.
  • Helena Roerich Letters I, (7 October 1930)

• What do we see in reality? Criminal stagnation of mind! Countries maintaining dead laws decay because they oppose the laws of evolution. Look around "with the eyes of a hawk." Study the present situation and approaching events on our planet! Verily, one may say that coming events already cast their shadow upon the Earth. It is impossible to arrest the awakened force of the new consciousness or understanding among the masses. All delays will only cause greater destruction. But we are not destroyers. We are creators. Therefore, let us ardently build the bastions of culture, knowledge of the Living Ethics, and Beauty. Knowledge and Beauty are the foundation and crown of cosmic evolution.
  • Helena Roerich Letters I, (13 October 1930)

• Thus, we are facing a majestic and threatening time, and only by the extreme tension of our entire strength can we conquer. Think in the broadest way, discuss together how you can best understand and apply what is sent to you! Learn how to oppose with dignity all the ignoramuses and destroyers of culture. Today, it is necessary to manifest the broadest understanding of the Banner of Peace. It is essential to understand the Banner of Peace and Culture as the greatest symbol. Yes, I can see that in the very near future the League of Culture will be established, in which will gather all the best representatives of thought, knowledge and creativeness, and where woman will have her full say; and this League of Culture will replace the extinct League of Nations... The new events are coming, and they will force the adversaries of culture to beware. . . but will it not be too late? It is necessary to know how to answer all ignoramuses and all those who try to suppress culture. 
  • Helena Roerich Letters I, (29 May 1931)

• If the West is heading toward some kind of crisis, it's worth asking ourselves a few basic questions. Modern society as we normally define it—a secular culture built around tolerance, reason, and democratic values—occupies a rather small portion of the world, and there are signs that it is shrinking. Is modernity the inexorable force of progress that we tend to assume? Is it a mere moment of human history that is fast fading? If it is something to value, how can we rediscover it, separate the good and the bad in it, make it relevant and vital?
  • Russell Shorto, Descartes’ Bones (2008), ISBN 978-0-307-27566-0, Preface (p. xix)

• Culture is the attempt by man to realize the conceivable in the possible. Man’s consciousness of himself within his environment distinguishes him from the lower animals, and turns him into the only animal capable of culture. This consciousness, his highest faculty, allows him to project mentally states of being that do not exist at the moment. Able to construct a past and future, he becomes a creature of time – a historian and a prophet. More than this, he can imagine objects and states of being that have never existed and may never exist in the real world – he becomes a maker of art. Thus, for example, though the ancient Greeks did not know how to fly, still they could imagine it. The myth of Icarus was the formulation in fantasy of their conception of the state ‘flying’. But man was not only able to project the conceivable into fantasy. He also learned to impose it on reality: by accumulating knowledge, learning experience, about that reality and how to handle it, he could shape it to his liking. This accumulation of skills for controlling the environment, technology, is another means to reaching the same end, the realization of the conceivable in the possible.
  • Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. 1970. p. 172. 

• The multitude are matter-of-fact. They live in commonplace concerns and interests. Their problems are, how to get more plentiful and better food and drink, more comfortable and beautiful clothing, more commodious dwellings, for themselves and their children. When they seek relaxation from their labors for material things, they gossip of the daily happenings, or they play games or dance or go to the theatre or club, or they travel or they read story books, or accounts in the newspapers of elections, murders, peculations, marriages, divorces, failures and successes in business; or they simply sit in a kind of lethargy. They fall asleep and awake to tread again the beaten path. While such is their life, it is not possible that they should take interest or find pleasure in religion, poetry, philosophy, or art. To ask them to read books whose life-breath is pure thought and beauty is as though one asked them to read things written in a language they do not understand and have no desire to learn. A taste for the best books, as a taste for whatever is best, is acquired; and it can be acquired only by long study and practice. It is a result of free and disinterested self-activity, of efforts to attain what rarely brings other reward than the consciousness of having loved and striven for the best. But the many have little appreciation of what does not flatter or soothe the senses. Their world, like the world of children and animals, is good enough for them; meat and drink, dance and song, are worth more, in their eyes, than all the thoughts of all the literatures. A love tale is better than a great poem, and the story of a bandit makes Plutarch seem tiresome. This is what they think and feel, and what, so long as they remain what they are, they will continue to think and feel. We do not urge a child to read Plato—why should we find fault with the many for not loving the best books?
  • John Lancaster Spalding, Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 11-12

• One ought not to hoard culture. It should be adapted and infused into society as a leaven. Liberality of culture does not mean illiberality of its benefits.
  • Wallace Stevens, in a journal entry (20 June 1899); as published in Souvenirs and Prophecies: the Young Wallace Stevens (1977) edited by Holly Stevens, Ch. 3

• When I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver.
  • Roger Stone,

• Cultural products which present foreign wars as the heroic effort of a master race to ennoble mankind are, to the degree they are successful as art, objectively in the interests of imperialists, who are people who make foreign wars against other races for profit.
  • Meredith Tax, "Culture is not Neutral, Whom Does it Serve?" in Radical Perspectives in the Arts (1972), p. 15

• Cultural products that present people who have no money or power as innately stupid or depraved, and thus unworthy of money or power, are in the interests of the ruling class and the power structure as it stands.
  • Meredith Tax, "Culture is not Neutral, Whom Does it Serve?" in Radical Perspectives in the Arts (1972), p. 15

• Cultural products which present women who do not want to be household slaves or universal mothers or sex objects as bitches or sexual failures objectively aid male supremacy.
  • Meredith Tax, "Culture is not Neutral, Whom Does it Serve?" in Radical Perspectives in the Arts (1972), p. 15

• [Culture is] that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.
  • Edward B. Tyler, Primitive Culture (1871) as quoted by Peter Farb, Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

• I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.
  • Kurt Vonnegut, in an interview in Playboy (July 1973)

• No one can take culture seriously if he believes that it is only the uppermost of several layers of epiphenomena resting on a primary reality of economic activity.
  • Richard Weaver, “The Importance of Cultural Freedom,” Life Without Prejudice (Chicago: 1965), p. 25

• Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Culture's got to go
  • Students protesting Stanford University's "Western Culture" course on 15 January 1987^[1][2]
  • Sometimes misquoted as "Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go"
  • Sometimes wrongly attributed to Jesse Jackson^[3][4]

• Classics
• High culture
• Mass culture
• Multiculturalism

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