Cultural Evaluation Quotes

There's a fine line between cultural criticism and bitterness.

The vulgar and common esteem is seldom happy in hitting right; and I am much mistaken if, amongst the writings of my time, the worst are not those which have most gained the popular applause.

The Americans, they always depend on a method what I call ... stupid, silly. All I ask is check yourself. Do not in fact repeat their lies.

One gets tired of the role critics are supposed to have in this culture: It's like being the piano player in a whorehouse; you don't have any control over the action going on upstairs.

It is only through contact and comparison that the relative value or worthlessness of the various cultural elements can be clearly and critically seen and understood.

What will people of the future think of us? Will they say, as Roger Williams said of the Massachusetts Indians, that we were wolves with the minds of men? Will they think that we resigned our humanity? They will have the right.

When we can't determine what is art - when you get to that point where we're not sure, that's the greatest likelihood that we're actually experiencing something great. But I think that's what the art world is most afraid of, because you lose that security. Then we don't know how to assign evaluation, whether it's cultural or otherwise.

There's lots of institutions and lots of different cultures, and so that's the kind of thing that parents need to be able to evaluate, and students themselves, when they make a selection.

Most civilisations, perhaps, look shinier in general terms and from several light-years away.

Ask yourself: would you be comfortable printing everything your employees, customers & partners have to say about your culture?

If the national mind of America be judged of by its legislation, it is of a very high order ... If the American nation be judged of by its literature, it may be pronounced to have no mind at all.

Literature and the arts are also criticism in a more particular and practical sense. They embody an expository reflection on, a value judgement of, the inheritance and context to which they pertain.

To be a mere verbal critic is what no man of genius would be if he could; but to be a critic of true taste and feeling is what no man without genius could be if he would.