Cultural Artifacts Quotes

Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books.

Well what's in your Amazonian hope chest?

In the industrial age natural, history and cultural artifacts had more utilitarian functions such as the development of industry and the promotion of patriotism.

I think with world building, it's important to create a sense of culture even if it is just a fantasy, and the best way to do that is to look at a real human culture and see what makes it cohesive.

Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's creations, books are the nearest to us for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error. But most of all they resemble us in their precious hold on life.

It is not my fault that my parents own the world's largest collection of black Santas.

It is very difficult to hang onto the relics of history.

I have a low opinion of books: they are piles of stones set up to show coming travelers where other minds have been, or at best signal smokes to call attention.

The humanities are like the great old Paris Flea Market where, amidst masses of junk, people with a good eye found cast away treasures...They are like a refugee camp where all the geniuses driven out of their jobs and countries by unfriendly regimes are idling.

Books are embalmed minds.

Saying that cultural objects have value is like saying that telephones have conversations.

Art among a religious race produces reliques [sic]; among a military one, trophies; among a commercial one, articles of trade.

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like. I have prepared one of my own. I have placed some rather large samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like.

Archaeology is not only the hand maid of history, it is also the conservator of art.

Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That's the soul of a country.

Museums collect what's important in their respective countries. In Berlin's National Gallery, however, this isn't the case. They're interested neither in me nor the other usual suspects. It's simply a German reality.

In tribal Botswana, I received some woven necklaces and a handmade bow with three poison arrows. It's framed and hanging on the wall in my living room and is, without a doubt, one of my favorite possessions.

A culture-bearing book, like a mule, bears the culture on its back. No one should sit down to write one deliberately. Culture-bearing books appear almost accidentally, like a sudden surge in the stock market. There are books of high quality that are a part of the culture, but that is not the same. They are a part of it. They aren't carrying it anywhere. They may talk about insanity sympathetically, for example, because that's the standard cultural attitude. But they don't carry any suggestion that insanity might be something other than sickness or degeneracy.

Your average pop song or film is a very sophisticated item, with very sophisticated ways of listening and viewing that we have not really consciously developed over the years - because we were having such a good time.

I do photograph things for people to look at 100 years from now. But we're such a mediated society that things become historical the next day.

Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.

A civilization without retail bookstores is unimaginable. Like shrines and other sacred meeting places, bookstores are essential artifacts of human nature. The feel of a book taken from the shelf and held in the hand is a magical experience, linking writer to reader.

My father when I was a kid was so deeply involved with Native Americans, he used to bring home these extraordinary headdresses and pipes.

You cannot build a cultural identity without the images and sounds of your culture. Most countries in the third world - poor countries - they've lost their memories. Because everyday, films and cultural artifacts disappear. Film is also a memory - of the character and imagination of a culture.

When we look back at the Mayans or ancient Egypt, we look at their art.