E. P. Thompson Quotes

Different people in different parts of the world can be thinking the same thoughts at the same time. It's an obsession of mine: that different people in different places are thinking the same thing but for different reasons. I try to make films which connect people.

I always point out to my Passover guests that the Hebrews were not living in isolation. They were at the crossroads of several great, elaborate cultures with their own mythology and religion and art and architecture and cultural belief. In fact, so many of the mythologies of the world describe the same events, just from different points of view.

Ameen Rihani, one of the earliest Arab Americans, devoted his life to bringing the East and the West together. We are not of the East or the West, he wrote. No boundaries exist in our breast: We are free.

At the level of the mind, you are part of the human mind; at the level of the brain you are part of the global brain. This is a perfect example of becoming the change that you want to see.

Globalisation has changed the world, and football is the perfect instrument to set an example and to help adapt to this new world.

Is it possible that the collective global psyche of the world is like an overloaded modem and can no longer meaningfully communicate, comprehend, or listen to anything or anyone else?

The world is a fabric we weave daily on the great looms of information, discussions, films, books, gossip, little anecdotes.

We live in an ever-changing global pop culture community.

I am interested in exploring encounters where worlds meet and not where they separate.

Everybody influences everybody else, in my opinion. There are different trends in music all the time. No matter who starts them, if it's a true trend in the music, it ends up influencing other people as well.

Asian music influenced Debussy, who influenced me - it's all a huge circle.

Meeting people from different countries makes you realise that everyone around the world has the same needs and aspirations.

Distance and difference become irrelevant as our technology connects youth from Vancouver, Toronto, Iqaluit, Attawapiskat, Delhi, Nairobi - anywhere - to learn from and about each other.

The travel that I've spent around the country, I always come back with ideas for L.A. and vice versa: My experiences in L.A. give me an immediacy to issues that sometimes people in Washington think about but aren't experiencing every day.

I'm not sure if it's just my pride, but I think I was able to bring out a different vibe as a Korean in Hollywood where there are many Korean Americans.

Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one. This is a virtual certainty because even in the vacuum matter is one; and if we don't see this, it's because we are blinding ourselves to it.

How far men go for the material of their houses! The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds of their civilization, where the moose and bear and savage dwell, for their pine boards for ordinary use. And, on the other hand, the savage soon receives from cities iron arrow-points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness with.

I don't believe in the clash of cultures. The culture is one. The culture is a ring off the same chain. Picasso was very much influenced by the African arts, and he influenced a whole other generation of artists. So everything influences everything.

I think we are becoming more and more linked, and before long, we'll all be one culture. It's happening in every field, not just fashion. Actually, I think the only hope for peace is if culture is homogenized. Unfortunately, money seems to be the only solution to political disagreements. If we are all linked through culture and trade, it won't be worth fighting each other.

When we agree to being part of something bigger than our own wired, fixated minds, we are saved.

Muslims, who have a completely different value system, come to the West, then they should accept that there are certain basic values in the West intrinsic to our culture. Just as I wouldn't suggest that any Westerner walk down the streets of Saudi Arabia in a bikini.

Before the scientific rationalism took hold of our minds and before we became succumbed to a materialistic worldview, the Western philosophy was holistic and relational, and even now there are many scientists in the West seeing things totally interconnected.

You don't go to a town to present the play and have applause at the end of it, but that's benign conquest. It's a glorious way of exploring other landscapes and other cultures in a very life-affirming way.

We are all cells of a much larger body, and like the cells of our own body it is hard for us to glimpse the whole pattern of the whole of what is happening, and yet we can sense that there is a purpose, and there is a pattern.

The world is sphere, has no East or West.