Mainstream people dislike homosexuality because they can't help concentrating on what homosexual men do to one another. And when you contemplate what people do, you think of yourself doing it. And they don't like that. That's the famous joke: I don't like peas, and I'm glad I don't like them, because if I liked them I would eat them and I hate them.
I think that, in comparison, New Yorkers and Northerners are so guarded.
No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted.
The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative social values, raising tradition on a pedestal. It expresses and confirms, rather than explains or questions, the sources of cultural attitudes and values.
Drunkenness was in good repute in England till "Bloody Mary" frowned upon it; it remained popular in Germany. The French drank more stably, not being quite so cold.
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.
Australia is much more liberal in accepting de facto relationships than the U.S.
Thomas Jefferson once said, "Women shouldn't wrinkle their pretty little foreheads with politics." Now does that mean he was a sexist, or was he just expressing what most males, and maybe most females, felt at that time? Or are both true?
I was in Asia and people asked me about being considered sex symbol. I don't know if that's good or not, because where I come from, sex isn't something you're allowed to talk about.
Conventional show-biz savvy held that Americans hated to be the objects of satire.
"Old" is definitely not cool in America. Never has been.
My accent was horrible. In Mexico, nobody says, 'You speak English with a good accent.' You either speak English, or you don't: As long as you can communicate, no one cares.
Unfortunately there are still people in other areas who regard New York City not as part of the United States, but as a sort of excrescence fastened to our Eastern shore and peopled by the less venturesome waves of foreigners who failed to go West to the genuine American frontier.
The struggle for human rights and democracy are not always the same thing. Sometimes what you have to do is break cultural attitudes. Democracies aren’t necessarily very good at that…. It’s very hard for oppressed minorities to be given their due.
The publicis rather apt to be unreasonably discontented when a woman does marry again, than when she does not.
Americans are so stiff when it comes to nudity. For me, I've always walked around the house naked. My husband, in real life, is like, 'Babe, could you just put some clothes on! Keep the mystery alive!'
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus When he said the world was round.
The Englishman can get along with sex quite perfectly so long as he can pretend that it isn't sex but something else.
I can't legislate to change human nature.
... the English think of an opinion as something which a decent person, if he has the misfortune to have one, does all he can to hide.
In Holland and Spain and France, where so many of us come from, people aren't interested in the sex lives of their players. We don't hear these stories - even in Italy where the media is right on top of football.
Europeans have a different take [on nudity] than American actors do. They're not quite as hung up.
Our society, the dominant culture doesn't like science. It doesn't like technology.
Human reactions to robots varies by culture and changes over time. In the United States we are terrified by killer robots. In Japan people want to snuggle with killer robots.
We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes.
