Michel de Montaigne Quotes

Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.

Culture has no logic.

Each person calls barbarism whatever is not his or her own practice.... We may call Cannibals barbarians, in respect to the rulesof reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity.

There is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some nation or other.

If someone were to put a proposition before men bidding them choose, after examination, the best customs in the world, each nation would certainly select its own.

If you want to judge the performance of the Egyptian people by the standards of German or Chinese or American culture, then there is no room for judgment.

We are to call barbarism whatever differs from our own customs. Indeed, we seem to have no other standard of truth and reason than the opinions and customs of our own country. There at home is always the perfect religion, the perfect legal system--the perfect and most accomplished way of doing everything.

There is the philosophy embedded in the culture we are living. It is quite clear for example that Arabs have a different culture than Malaysians.

Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.

I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.

Cultural comparisons are good because they can tell you about what's similar, but also sometimes they make it easier to see obvious differences.

Our incapacity to comprehend other cultures stems from our insistence on measuring things in our own terms.

Culture is a way of coping with the world by defining it in detail.

The theory of cultural bias... is the idea that a culture is based on a particular form of organization. It can't be transplanted except to another variant of that organization.

On my parents' scale of values, the more Western something was, the more cultured it was considered.

There is endless variety in the details of the customs and laws which prevail of the world at large.

Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with passion.

I don't understand anything about America's culture.

Culture is intangible. It's spiritual. You can't buy it.

Culture is the way for a country to know itself.

Every culture is different in terms of what is taboo and what is acceptable. I grew up in Singapore, where people are very mindful of that. One can see that as restriction or as consideration for a fellow person living within a shared environment.

We have a unique culture.