Cultural Debt Quotes

The Greek playwrights, we're all beholden to them, every one of us.

As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam.

The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilization, owe little or none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old Greeks, though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people.

We can recognize and give credit where credit is due, to the debt of taste we owe Europe, but we have taste, too.

If there is much understanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure which stems, I think, from the straightjacket of history which we have inherited…. we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society and system of believe, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own society.

I'm proud to acknowledge my debt to the 'Reverend Satchelmouth' ... He is the beginning and the end of music in America

As an actress, I think it's important to look back and realize that we aren't always quite as original as we think we are. There's this grand, textured history for us over the last 100 years of incredible writers, directors, and performers.

Europe has always owed to oriental genius its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true.

Social Science … led us to the fallacy that, since all men have their being in culture and as a result of culture, they owe a debt to that culture which even a lifetime of altruism could not repay.

I think we all know that world owes an enormous debt to Greece and the Greek people.

We are so indebted to our ancestors, musically speaking, that they have left us 400 years of music.

Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.

I wanted to tour the United States because I feel I owe it to the community that I grew up in. When I was growing up, the only people I saw on TV were Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu and Jet Li. Our representation as Asians wasn't big, but I wanted to be like Lucy Liu and then Maggie Q.

We owe an historic debt to American Indians. They have a unique set of concerns that haven't been addressed, and I'd like to stand with them. Also, I'd like to get their views on immigration.

The destination of the soul: this is what I, led on by Nils Holgersson, came to seek in the literature of Western Europe. I fervently hope that my pursuit, as a Japanese, of literature and culture will, in some small measure, repay Western Europe for the light it has shed upon the human condition.

I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has continued to put out of sight our obligations to the Muhammadans. Surely they cannot be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancour and national conceit cannot be perpetuated forever. The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Europe. He has indelibly written it on the heavens as any one may see who reads the names of the stars on a common celestial globe.