Stanley Marcus Quotes

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

For many societies, the journey to modernity has been painful and costly.

A great department store, easily reached, open at all hours, is more like a good museum of art than any of the museums we have yet established.

Americans are opting out of public venues like the playground and the sidewalk for private venues like the healthclub and the mall. We're living our lives inside one form of corporation or another.

Average Americans order nonfat decaf iced vanilla lattes at Starbucks and choose from 1,500 drawer pulls at The Great Indoors. Amazon gives every town a bookstore with 2 million titles, while Netflix promises 35,000 different movies on DVD. Choice is everywhere - liberating to some, but to others, a new source of stress.

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

The expansion of choice has become an explosion of choice.

You live in the city and all the time there are signs telling you what to do and billboards trying to sell you something.

I lived in L.A. for four years, and basically, every corner you go to, or in a restaurant, you can't even find people from the same background.

Miami is one of the great cultural melting pots in the world. I love working and living here.

Futurism: This was a movement of intellectuals who wanted to replace tradition with the modern world of machinery, speed, violence, and public relations. It proves that we should be careful what intellectuals wish for, because we might get it.

Over the past thirty years Europe’s influence has transformed Cairo. Now…we are civilized.

Modernization is found in markets.

We are on the cusp of this time where I can say, "I speak as a citizen of the world" without others saying, "God, what a nut.

We want American customs, habits, manners, dress, manufactures, modes of thought, modes of expression, and language. We should encourage national and even State peculiarities; for there are peculiarities and differences in the wants and situations of all people, that require provincial and national, not cosmopolitan, institutions and productions.

Western fundamentalism: By this term I mean the elevation of Western modernity above all other ways of knowing and being and it includes adherence to capitalism, individualism, patriarchy, scientific rationalism, ‘Christian’ morality, commodification of the environment, private property and a belief in progress.

Modernity is a shifting entity, not easily defined. Exactly the same is true of empire.

The department store was a product of the 19th century and became a very important institution as America went into the 20th century. It provided show places in developing towns like Terre Haute, Sacramento, and Dallas.

I think, probably, socially, in some ways New York may be the least American city. It represents too many things that Americans really don't entirely want in their lives.

When I was growing up, many of my relatives had never seen a black person before. Today, hundreds, maybe thousands of Africans live in Istanbul's old city alone. It's hard to imagine their lives in their human totality.

If New York has just become a mall for the world, then what's the difference between being here and somewhere else?

I should not romanticize the simplicity of a village. For instance, the place from where I used to buy a packet of glucose biscuits in my village is now selling cellphones.

I remember returning to Bangalore after a few months of travel and seeing it as a first-world city, like New York or San Francisco. This may be obvious to some people, but I grew up in Delhi, and I had no experience of how someone from a 'Tier 2' city may view a 'Tier 1' city. You really do emigrate between worlds when you come from those towns.

You go into Wal-Mart, and you see stuff you typically wouldn't see anywhere else.

Diversity isn't just a hallmark of big cities anymore.