Tony Hawk Quotes

You can tell the values of a nation by its advertisements

Popular culture is most powerful when it offers us a vision of how our society should look - or at least reproduces our reality.

America used to say that hip-hop was a cancer. Then it embraced that cancer and realized, 'Hey, this isn't a bad thing. It is part of us, just more America.'

Through fashion, it's possible to express deep values of one's creative talent and also the values that are expected of society.

It's not normal for a white guy to get corn rows; a lot of people judged me. I like the way it looks, so you have to be confident.

There are certain images attached to an Indian woman - a mother, daughter, homemaker... there are certain parts of it that I really like, and I love having that identity also, but I feel women shouldn't be limited to that.

We have a unique culture.

Making something the norm is the only way of not making it a talking point.

You have not just weekly ratings, but minutes where they say during a show, 'This guy's boring, get him off.' This has produced a thing in our society where we have no shame and the worst offense is to be boring.

I just didn't want people to think, Here's this idiot Danish actor who made up this name to get attention. It's really quite common here, and I've had it all my life.

I like to walk down the street in England and just be myself but I could never do that in Spain. In Manchester I can walk down Deansgate and not be troubled.

The thing is, what most people don't understand is that there are so many of us growing up in Europe who are not free to be ourselves. We're not allowed to be who we are. We are not free to marry or to be in relationships with people that we choose. We can't even pick our own career. This is the norm in the Muslim heartlands of Europe.

I realize people feel a complex way about me and how I handle things compared to what I do in the ring.

Different cultures produce a different 'cool.' And your perception of 'cool' changes depending on where you are.

One thing I want to teach my son is sensitivity to other people. I want to teach him not to be this macho freak.

Marriage is traditionally the destiny offered to women by society. Most women are married or have been, or plan to be or suffer from not being.

I once gave a workshop and I asked the women poets there, If you went back to that little town you've come from - these were from small towns - would you say, I'm a poet? And one of them said, If I said I was a poet in that town, they'd think I didn't wash my windows. And that stayed with me for so long, the sense of the collective responsibility of someone as against the individual thing it takes to be a poet.

We were born in this society, we grew up in this society. And we learn to be like everyone else, playing nonsense all the time.

Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts; but, being in its nature conventional, it loves what is conventional, or what belongs to coming together.

Men feel like they can be a professional and a father. For women it's "or." That's offensive to me. The concept that it's not possible is crazy.

That a whole part of the middle class detests me... is utterly normal. I would be troubled if the contrary were true.

The conception of what is normal varies not only with the culture but also within the same culture, in the course of time.

In our day, you can mock religion in public and even get funds for doing it. But you can't show respect for religion in public - or you risk being hauled into court.

People always ask us women about how we balance our lives. Rarely do they ever ask men this but we are asked this and it makes a lot of sense - balance, right? It sounds right. And of course you do have to balance because otherwise you'd go crazy. And you do have to find ways of doing things in a sensible manner, raising children and all those choices. But then there's a part of creativity which is irrational and which is obsessive and then that's also part of what we do. So, I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that's part of what makes someone good.

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.