Matthew Fox Quotes

I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.

My mother came from a very affluent background, very Westernized, while my father was more Eastern. So I've had a very good blend of the East and the West. I guess this has been extremely helpful in making my career and the way I function.

Like the ancient Silk Road itself, 'The Sound of Silk' will make the foreign familiar while challenging long-held notions of identity and our place in the world.

I'm not Chinese. I thrive in interesting times.

You experience other cultures to give you a kind of shock that makes you look at your own culture. You appreciate it more as a result of being out of it, but you also realise there are some things lacking in your culture.

Americans are hidden dragons to me.

Over the past several years, all of us as Canadians, and as members of the North American cultural and economic environment, have been to a greater or lesser extent party to a significant attitudinal change towards our culture.

I want to learn about a different religion. I grew up Catholic, but my grandfather was Jewish. Knowledge about other religions can help you understand your own better. I think it's kind of hypocritical to believe one thing and don't know about any others.

I hope to use dialogue and culture as a means of bringing people of various cultures together, and using that as a way to resolve conflict.

I say the same thing that I've said for decades now, which is: don't go over to Japan trying to change it, thinking that you know better. Go there trying to understand.

I think that what happens for many Christians is, they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true, and they stop examining it. Consequently, because it's already accepted to be true, they don't examine other people's faiths... That, I think, is not healthy for a person of any faith.

The religion of the Indian is the last thing about him that the man of another race will ever understand.

Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds.

Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.

I am the bridge between the East and the West. I don't want to abandon one for the other.

I live with one foot in the sand and one in the snow. There's European egocentricity, and the African opposite. I normally say that my African experience has made me a better European.

Writers are a product of where we come from, but by looking at alternatives to the culture in which we live, we can find ways to change and hopefully improve it.

In the U.S., diversity is a politically correct slogan. In India, it is a historical fact. Much as we in the West may resent it, India has a lot to teach us when it comes to religious tolerance.

National cultures and heritages must compete for man's attention with the mind-absorbing advances of universal science.

Travelers never think that they are the foreigners

National culture can act as a bridge, instead of an obstacle, to mutual spiritual and intellectual understanding.

I fully believe that our respective religious traditions - Islam and Catholicism - have the necessary resources to overcome past and present misunderstandings and to foster mutual friendship and understanding between our peoples. I am aware, as well, that collaboration does not imply giving up our distinct religious identities, but is rather a journey toward new discoveries, growth and self-respect.

I am very, very proud I am also Turkish and both of my parents are from Turkey. I was born in Germany and grew up there. By playing football, I learned my different cultures, and that is an advantage if you grow up as a person. You get a different view on certain things. I am very, very thankful I was able to pick the best from many cultures.

When I dig around in the roots of how we imagine ourselves, how we govern, how we live together in communities - how we treat one another when we are not being stupid - what I find is deeply Aboriginal.

As a youngster, my parents made me aware that all that was from the African Diaspora belonged to me. So I came in with Caribbean music, African music, Latin music, gospel music and blues.