Cultural Awareness Quotes

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

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.

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

I realized that I was African when I came to the United States. Whenever Africa came up in my college classes, everyone turned to me. It didn't matter whether the subject was Namibia or Egypt; I was expected to know, to explain.

You are very familiar with Western ways, but you are too young. You go everywhere to follow the big news, but the questions you ask are too simple -- sometimes naive.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

I think it's good that we're sometimes reminded of important events in history.

Religion, any religion, no matter what sort of wonderful religion, never be universal. So now education is universal, so we have to sort of find ways and means through education system, from kindergarten up to university level, to make awareness these good things, the values, inner values.

What can we be certain of from history? That human beings have been wrong innumerable times, by vast amounts, and with catastrophic results. Yet today there are still people who think that anyone who disagrees with them must be either bad or not know what he is talking about…Students can graduate from even the most prestigious colleges and universities wholly unaware that there are not simply different opinions about particular issues but a whole comprehensive framework of ideas and analysis through which those issues can be seen in a way that leads to very different conclusions from the ones their professors have taught or insinuated…It is a shame that ancient history is seldom taught in our schools. Finding out that people thousands of years ago were basically pretty much the way they are today — people of every race, color, creed, national origin, political ideology and sexual orientation—would reduce our chances of having Utopian hopes for big changes any time soon.

If we were able to see people in other countries and learn about our differences, why would there be any misunderstandings? War would be a thing of the past.

Regardless of whether you speak the language or are familiar with a culture, the picture should hold up.

The world looks different and is understood differently at every spot on earth. Without accepting this simple truth it is hard for us to grasp the behavior of others, the motives and aims of those actions.

In such diffused changes of culture two factors are necessary: contact and understanding.

People identify with me - everyone does - African American women, Caucasian women, they all identify with me because I'm ethnic.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

My generation those who were students in the late 60s was always, in the words of the Who, talking about our generation. That's what we thought of ourselves, as the most important thing since sliced bread. And the "we" that we meant was really the Western Europeans and American generation. And as I think back I suppose I have a sense of guilt on behalf of my generation, a sense that we were terribly provincial and didn't understand the really important stuff that was going on in Eastern Europe.

Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country.

We know longer live in a homogenous society, it is not black, white, Asian or Latin, it is a melting pot. Until we learn to assimilate and learn about other cultures, we will continue to have racism problems. Of course, there are other '-isms' as our ills. We have sexism, ageism, elitism, homophobia-ism, there are many -isms we have to overcome.

Educating children and their parents on the universal messages of free enterprise and self-determination takes money. So does grooming political talent within the community and training and hiring Latino surrogates to bring the message to Spanish- and English-speaking media.

National cultures and heritages must compete for man's attention with the mind-absorbing advances of universal science.

Skullcaps, fezes, turbans – it all costs money which goes to foreigners. We will become civilized…We will march forward…Civilization is a fearful fire which consumes those who ignore it.

If you're playing with somebody from another idiom, you can't react to them in the same way that you react to somebody that is closer to your idiom. You don't fall into the same habits. You find a new way of communicating.

We should be talking about celebrating our differences, understanding that those differences make us richer and stronger.

My experience at DePauw was about as beneficial as any experience I've had.