Cultural Disparity Quotes

Is it, perhaps, possible that there are two kinds of Civilization--one for home consumption and one for the heathen market?

Was there ever a nation on God's fair earth civilized from the bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was, and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their vantage ground.

One of the interesting things about Los Angeles is that it's still supplying the whole of the world with its dreams through movies and songs and TV - often of an all-American family at the same time as the real Los Angeles is peopled by souls from Vietnam, Guatemala, and Korea who look nothing like the images being beamed out. I think all that is going to have to change and illusion is going to have to catch up with reality in that regard.

Democracy requires common ground on which all can stand, but that ground is sinking beneath our feet, and democracy may be going down the sinkhole with it.

We've reached a truly remarkable situation: a grotesque mismatch between the American intelligencia and the American electorate.

The Chinese people have only family and clan groups; there is no national spirit. Consequently, in spite of four hundred million people gathered together in one China, we are, in fact, but a sheet of loose sand.

It is a dream that the Hindu and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality and this misconception of one Indian nation lies gone far beyond the limits and is the cause of most of your troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time.

I'd read an enormous amount but had spent so much time in my own head that I didn't have extensive social skills. Suddenly I was in this world where I was surrounded by these incredibly polished and wealthy kids who had gone to prep schools, and I felt daunted by them. I don't think people were aware of how full of anxiety I was... For a long time I felt like I was living in a place where I shouldn't have been.

It's a bit unfair to accuse Obama of dividing the nation when the facts show that it already is.

The overall strength of Chinese culture and its international influence is not commensurate with China's international status. The international culture of the West is strong while we are weak.

I think the thing with 'Rise Up,' something that really does bug me, is that America has become very divided.

My dad grew up basically in a hut in Taiwan without enough food to eat. And within one generation his son in America gets to do a comedy show about whatever he wants.

I think that's something that we as black people in this country have been robbed of. I compare it to my brother's wife, who is Hispanic. She was born in America but her parents are from Honduras. She speaks Spanish. She knows the culture. But most black people, we were robbed of that. We don't know our heritage.

How are fears born? They are born because of differences in tradition and history; they are born because of differences in emotional, political and national circumstances. Because of such differences, people fear they cannot live together.

If it's hard for Blue America to see Red America as anything other than a bunch of dumb, racist rednecks; it's hard for Red America to recognize that many minorities are legitimately worried about what a Trump presidency means for their family.

I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.

There has always been a strange dissonance between the public and the private in Nigeria.

Cultural inequality is not grounded in race or ethnicity.

I won't say there's disrespect for the Indian home cook, but I was never exposed to that. Even in a semi-urban Indian family, you will find a maid. And once you meet these people, you realise they cook purely out of passion or love for the family.

You may set the Negro free, but you cannot make him otherwise than an alien to the European.

I worked with guys in Japan that were champions and they came over here for six months or a year and they treated them like garbage.

Whether it was H. P. Lovecraft's doomed towns or Shirley Jackson's lonely, looming 'The Haunting of Hill House,' the boondocks had all the fun. As a black kid in Queens, New York, I couldn't have felt more removed.

So the same cultural and political issues that divided us in 1968 are still dividing us.