Graydon Carter Quotes

Now, I know it's a widespread assumption in the West that as countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not. It is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West.

I think our societies - to certain extent, of course, and to different degrees, but almost with no exception - have always been struggling to come to terms with archaic traditions.

It would be a sad day for India if it has to inherit the English scale and the English tastes so utterly unsuitable to the Indian environment.

What they fear, I think rightly, is that traditional Vietnamese society cannot survive the American economic and cultural impact.

I'm Cherokee, and there were times when social expansion was something that is needed by a cultural group or a national group.

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 love having different cultures around, but when the parent culture kind of dissipates, you're left thinking, 'Well, what's going on?'

People tend to believe that to be modern you have to disengage from your heritage, but it's not true.

Modern culture is a tremendous force.

Considered now as a possession, one may define culture as the residuum of a large body of useless knowledge that has been well and truly forgotten.

We regard those other cultures, such as that of India, where many people live and believe and behave much as they did 1,000 or 2,000 years ago, as undeveloped.

Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.

I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.

If we can't understand the Afghan family, we can't understand Afghanistan.

In a kind of a way there's a bit of that happening now so we have to be careful to preserve our culture.

I don't have space to enter into the examples or the history of this, so I'm left with having to make the bold statement that culture is extinct.

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

Americans are constantly extolling "traditions"; litanies to family values are at the center of every politician's discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined as "identities" that can be accepted as part of larger patterns of distinctiveness, cooperation, and openness to innovation.

A deep meaning resides in old customs.

Other people's traditions look charming and decorative and exotic. They're nice places to visit on holiday, but you wouldn't want to live with one.

Class doesn't create culture anymore.

We want to uplift the culture of Filipino - our respect to our elders, how we pray before we eat and sleep. These are things the younger generations tend to forget because of our exposure to other cultures.

I do sort of question the notion that conservatives should try and turn America into a place where people can come from traditional societies and continue to be fully traditional in every sense.

You can't escape culture. You can learn about it. You can criticize it. You can try to move it slowly. But at the end of the day, you can't actually opt out of the culture that you're in.

We cannot just ape the west. What may be good in an alien country may be unpalatable in India.