Mary Catherine Bateson Quotes

If I had not been coached well about how to deal with a culture and a set of values that were foreign to my own, I would not have been able to be successful.

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.

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'm interested in people who become culturally fluent. And when I meet young people I'm often amazed they don't quite seem to have a sense of where they're from. They're like the citizens of the airport.

One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding.

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.

Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.

It is a mistake to expect good work from expatriates for it is not what they do that matters but what they are not doing.

When you introduce something new to a country, you want to do it right. Generally, that means you have to do it yourself.

I got exposed to so many different cultures and people.

Multicultural markets are nuanced but not alien.

Travelers never think that they are the foreigners

Executives in Hollywood are missing a lot because they don't want to watch other cultures.

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 actually love the challenge of being in a new place where I'm so obviously the foreigner.

I'm always a big advocate for adapting to your new team, your new country and your new team-mates.

I've been exposed to so many different cultures.

I understand different cultures because I have travelled a lot.

Breaking down barriers, succeeding away from home, living in another country, another culture, different football, makes you much stronger.

The art of learning fundamental common values is perhaps the greatest gain of travel to those who wish to live at ease among their fellows.

A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.

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.

At about the age of seven … I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading: All my characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather: how lovely it was that the sun had come out. This despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria; we didn’t have snow, we ate mangoes, and we never talked about the weather, because there was no need to.

You're sort of forced to include this aspect of culture into your life whether it be for social reasons or business purposes.

For me, the experience of being in other culture really set up a longing. When I'm traveling, things seem really sharp. You learn things ten times faster.