Paulo Freire Quotes

Africa doesn't leap on you immediately; it seeps slowly, and it's incredibly important to be respectful and humble there.

There's a kind of integrity to being an observer of a culture. I think Canadians have that privilege innately. We are, like, the observers of the American culture.

Wherever you go, respect the local culture or you will suffer.

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.

I think that we in the West expect people to adapt to our culture very, very quickly when they come to our country. But when we go over to someone else's, I don't think we are willing to meet them halfway like we expect them to meet us. I think having cultural sensitivity is a lot more important than we realize.

Culture isn't all just about what can be tweaked and twitched in the simplest possible way. As people move around, they literally don't see what's around them, because they're wedded to earworms that are burrowing into their heads endlessly in a kind of negotiation with these tiny screens.

We must teach the next generation to not just learn languages, but whole cultures and belief systems. We will then make more of an effort to understand people and their different cultures.

If you decide to move to another country and to live within its laws you don't express your disregard for the essence of the culture. It's a form of aggression.

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.

Globalisation has obliterated distance, not just physically but also, most dangerously, mentally. It creates the illusion of intimacy when, in fact, the mental distances have changed little. It has concertinaed the world without engendering the necessary respect, recognition and tolerance that must accompany it.

Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.

We should never denigrate any other culture but rather help people to understand the relationship between their own culture and the dominant culture. When you understand another culture or language, it does not mean that you have to lose your own culture.

Whatever country you go to, you need to definitely follow the rules. So I believe it's very important for people, wherever they go, any immigrant should know or should try to learn something about the culture.

When in Rome, live as the Romans do; when elsewhere, live as they live elsewhere.

I try to study the background of the country I am in and what were my hits there, so I can at least give them some of what they want. It's like a wedding - give them something old, something new, something borrowed and definitely something blue!

China is a company of contradictions. Nothing is what it appears to be. We have to be extremely respectful when we go overseas.

Some things are really sacred and important to other cultures, so you have to be aware, politically, about those things before you just adopt them.

The unknown makes people uncomfortable. And even living in a city that's as cosmopolitan as New York City is, there's so many things I don't know about other cultures, even though I encounter other cultures - maybe even 18 or 19 of them - when I get on a subway car every day.

No matter how certain I am about some culture or some group of people, my opinions are only as accurate as the amount of time I've spent with them.

I like to live like a local. When you are somewhere, you have to try to take the culture of that place and try to adapt.

I understand different cultures because I have travelled a lot.

A lot of issues that we have in the world today rise from the fact that we do not know enough about each other's cultures, that we don't respect each other's origins and there is so much negativity and strife around because we don't know where the other person is coming from.

If you're playing in a tradition and you have no reference point to it, no understanding and have not studied it, I can't respect that.

Surely one advantage of traveling is that, while it removes much prejudice against foreigners and their customs, it intensifies tenfold one's appreciation of the good at home.

American cultural institutions seem so bent on preserving the values of "Western civilization," the mythical "Whitetown," that welearn about one another's cultures the same way we learn about sex: in the streets.