Cultural Comparisons Quotes

Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner.

I'm self-deprecating because I'm British, and that's what we're supposed to be. I'm sure if I was American, I'd tell you how great I was.

Trying to recreate for people the ways in which the past was similar to the present is an important part of what a historian has to do, and what a student of foreign policy has to do.

If I'd lived in Roman times, I'd have lived in Rome. Where else? Today America is the Roman Empire and New York is Rome itself.

Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy, Canada is like an intelligent, 35 year old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson.

In Europe, they travel a lot lighter. I always joke that my Indonesian passengers bring their house and their neighbor's house.

I consider Greeks the Jews of the sea.

Europeans are easily offended by errors in their titles or full names. Their exasperation is equal to that shown by Americans when the department store fouls up their bills.

Cultural comparisons are good because they can tell you about what's similar, but also sometimes they make it easier to see obvious differences.

My friends who are not from Sweden tell me that I'm more reserved or maybe more ... I guess the opposite of what a Latin American would be. Maybe because Scandinavians are more careful with their words and I guess it takes a lot to become a friend of a Swede.

Everybody has their own way of remembering and every culture has their traditions. When you compare the similarities and differences to other cultures, you start to learn about them and appreciate them. Whether it's the Japanese or the Africans, they all have ways of conjuring spirits and the support of those who have gone before them.

When I was in Thailand, I went into the up-country because Marco Polo didn't get down into the flesh pots of Bangkok because they didn't exist in those days.

Scientific fashions last longer than women's fashions but not as long as men's

Californians don't have that marvelous British cynicism, but then the British can be so patronizing at times.

The dynamics and structures found in those groups called families in our society may not be evident in those groups called families in other places and times.

Abroad, they have covered pretty much all subjects, explored every possibility, every twist. So similarities between ideas you have and those filmed abroad are quite possible.

I am bad at cultural generalizations but I would venture to say that by a wide margin there is less hypocrisy about sex in France than in America.