Philip Kaufman Quotes

Words contract a significance which clings to them long after the condition of things to which they owe it has passed away.

Modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological, category.

There's been resistance to every new technology that's ever been introduced. When books came out hundreds of years ago, there were complaints that it would destroy the oral tradition. Some of those fears were justified, but it didn't stop the rise of the written word. And books have proven to be incredibly useful.

There certainly have been a lot of changes, although they come in such gradations that most people have either forgotten, or, if they're too young, they never knew about them in the first place.

I began in an era where four-letter words were not allowed.

Asian literature is evolving with the people. It's always a reflection on what's happening to the culture at large.

When I moved to Beijing in 2005 to write, I was accustomed to hearing the story of China's transformation told in vast, sweeping strokes - involving one fifth of humanity and great pivots of politics and economics.

Cultural change always precedes political change.

I don't have any particular desire to see words making a comeback. They are of their era, after all, and that is their identity - they form part of the linguistic color of a period.

Political correctness has changed everything. People forget that political correctness used to be called spastic gay talk.

We are at a time in our country's history that inclusive language is better than exclusive language.

How strange that the world should change because of words, and words change because of the world

Christians must understand the nature of the change that has occurred in our culture. No longer do the secularists just mock Christians from afar. They are now actively campaigning to indoctrinate children in an anti-God philosophy--to teach them to be secularists and atheists.

Every Age has its own peculiar faith. Any attempt to translate into facts the mission of one Age with the machinery of another, can only end in an indefinite series of abortive efforts. Defeated by the utter want of proportion between the means and the end, such attempts might produce martyrs, but never lead to victory.

A friend of mine said that when Barack Obama was running for president, there was a whole generation of white kids who are used to looking up to a black person center stage speaking. And that's because of hip-hop. So there was no adjustment. A person of color in authority at times is very startling to people. But as time goes on, it becomes less startling.

What I'm interested in is modern American history. I'm taken with the changes that have occurred in America in my lifetime.

In our society many of the old rituals have lost much of their power. New ones have not arisen.

As an older person, I do feel an obligation to tell the story about what was really happening in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, as I saw it.

Culture is a product of law. And laws create norms for society. This is why anyone who wants to change the culture of a country must try to change the norms of the country.

Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.

Eternal truth needs a human language that alters with the spirit of the times.

Political change and academic change and intellectual change are obviously crucial, but they don't necessarily change society. They can change a particular class and give everybody in that class great arguments, but that doesn't necessarily translate into the body of the culture.

There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture . . .

I think that Shakespeare is a s***. Absolute s***! He may have been a genius for his time, but I just can't relate to that stuff. "Thee and thous" - the guy sounds like a faggot.

People who want to wage cultural wars ought to keep in mind that cultural views often don't move at all for a very long time, but when they move they can move very fast.