Teddy Thompson Quotes

We live in a multi-cultural society far more open to international ideas. If you'd told me 20 years ago I'd drive through Bury and see someone sitting outside a cafe drinking a latte, I'd have laughed. In fact, I wouldn't have even known what a latte was.

Look, the whole world wants to modernize, and when you look to what they mean by modernizing, they mean Americanize. Would a modern Greek prefer to live in Orange County than Piraeus? Yes. Absolutely.

If the lives of men can be measured in terms of years, ideologies in decades, and nations in centuries, then the unit measuring civilizations, born of the interaction among peoples, would be the millennium.

We live in a dominant culture of ceaseless Departure and Progress that has so far lasted two or three centuries.

It is my great good luck the words I use are English words, which means I live in a very old nation of open borders; a rich, deep, multi-layered, promiscuous universe, infused with Latin, German, French, Greek, Arabic and countless other tongues.

I can remember when I first went into the Himalayan area way back in 1951. Money, for instance, was not important at all to the local people. But now, finance has become just as important to them as it is to us, and this is a change maybe not for the better.

The old men running the industry just have not got a clue. They've got to come to terms with the fact that Britain is no longer a totally white place where people ride horses, wear long frocks and drink tea. The national dish is no longer fish and chips; it's curry.

The question was heatedly debated of how much Western culture should be brought into China.

It's got more cosmopolitan, and it's lost its uniqueness, but Australia is still a great place.

Friends give me a hard time about the pants I'm wearing, which are made in China. Well, how do you find the right clothes? Or the right movie studio? The right people giving you checks? Good luck doing the right thing all the time.

We might be shifting away from a Eurocentric view of the United States into something that's much more multicultural, multinational, and Chinese food is just one slice of that.

I have a very strong identity that connects me to Argentina and to Latin America, but at the same time, I have a deep connection to the music from the United States and music from Europe, too.

If the United States isn’t keeping pace with the rest of the civilized world, then for its own good it needs to change.

The culture of Saudi Arabia belongs to a past age. It is not appropriate for the age of globalization.

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

My final aim is to bring Iran, within twenty years, to the same level of civilization and progress as will be enjoyed by the most highly developed countries. During the last ten years the degree of our backwardness has been halved, but it is this remaining backwardness which will be the most difficult to combat.

We should be obliged to admit that Europe is Americanizing herself with disconcerting rapidity.

The Empress Dowager enjoins her people that only by adopting what is superior about the foreign countries can we rectify what is wanting in China.

Paris is an old and traditional place; it needs new blood.

Indian cinema is changing not because of outside pressure but because of inside pressure. Society is changing. Obviously, ideas change because of globalization, because of the huge middle class that is mostly first generation.

Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and 'retro' clothing in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter of TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works.

Israel is a mishmash of other cultures. It's like New Orleans; it's a meltdown of other cultures.

I think of Westernized culture as a good visual for my music.

There's something really admirable about French culture and an attraction in how independent it is from our own. So, it's odd that in other countries that are very American-influenced - who seem to care more about the Oscars than anyone here does - there's both anti-Americanism and also too much America.

I think my heritage makes me very open to try things, taking on different flavours, mixing it all up. I find that exciting.