Jean Piaget Quotes

I always think like I was born in the country where everybody ate apples. Then I ended up in the country where everybody eats bananas. So now, I eat bananas so long, I'm just remembering the apples.

In the late 20th century, it became possible to travel between cultures, between the old world and the new, with great ease. So when you go back, you take the changed person with you who, in turn, changes things that otherwise might have stayed the same.

Immigrants to the United States usually arrive with a willingness to fit into their new country and reshape their identities accordingly.

Capacity of human societies both to absorb and to discard cultures is much underestimated.

We are taking our culture and suturing it to America. Like gum on the bottom of a shoe, we are not going to disappear. Unlike other peoples who totally assimilated, we are more interested in co-assimilation.

The common schools are the stomachs of the country in which all people that come to us are assimilated within a generation. When a lion eats an ox, the lion does not become an ox but the ox becomes a lion.

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.

In becoming an Irishman, Patrick wedded his world to theirs, his faith to their life…Patrick found a way of swimming down to the depths of the Irish psyche and warming and transforming Irish imagination – making it more humane and more noble while keeping it Irish.

When I live in a country, I always try to learn about the country - not just England, the U.K. as a whole - so I will stay here some days to do something different.

When you bring multiple cultures together, there's a degree of push and pull.

I know that if I have come to Britain, I must adapt, and I will try to.

As a young boy in a new country, you had to make new friends, and that was really difficult.

My grandparents bowed to the Americans and sought to learn from them. My parents sought to be them.

Traditionally, historians thought in terms of invasions: the Celts took over the islands, then the Romans, then the Anglo-Saxons. It now seems much more likely that the resident population doesn't change as much as thought. The people stay put but are reculturalized by some new dominant culture.

I've gotten used to being a foreigner.

I still feel Ghanaian, but my mentality is more European.

You leave America, then you go someplace else, you begin to create something totally different.

I'm an Australian. And I'm speaking generally here, but Australians in general aren't patriotic or nationalistic. Our country was built by immigrants. So, by my experience, I've seen the way immigration has transformed nations. They are the key people who quite literally build civilizations, be it culturally or musically.

I like the idea that something happens to everybody who comes to L.A. - whether they are Mexican, Irish, black, or hillbillies. You come here, and you leave all your traditions behind. And since there's no traditions here, you just make one up.

I think when you move to a country like the U.S., you need to understand the culture, to understand how people see the game, and adapt yourself.

The writer, Ruth Jhabvala, livedin India but was German. My partner Ismail Merchant was from Bombay but was educated in England and he had a different view on the world. Probably they had to contend with some sort of Oregonian-ness in me that they didn't understand and didn't know where it was coming from.

Basketball definitely helped, because even though I couldn't speak English, I was able to spend a lot of time with my teammates, which helped me learning English a lot.

I was very surprised when I first started spending time in America. The culture shock was something I wasn't prepared for. I had a lot of work to do to try to begin to understand this enormous and complex country that I thought would be an easy process.

I am not the sort of person who divests myself of everything that came before I came to Australia. I want to take all the knowledge and experiences I gained when I was in England and put it at the service of Australia because I have to bring something to Australia - not just money but myself.

I'm excited to share my experience as an immigrant assimilating to a new country and an outsider stumbling my way into Hollywood.