Cultural Exclusivity Quotes

Diversity" is a difficulty to be overcome, not an advantage to be sought. True, America does a better job than most at accommodating a diverse population. We also do a better job at curing cancer and containing pollution. But no one goes around mindlessly exclaiming: "Cancer is a strength!" "Pollution is our greatest asset!

They're very nationalistic the French - or they used to be. Very insular. Pretty arrogant.

There are different Klans just like there are different fraternities in college.

When I was growing up, there was a feeling in one's living room as much as in one's local gallery that a little elitism was good for the soul.

Once avant-garde artists receive official recognition, they start a double life. In one, they inspire younger artists to do more. In the other, they inspire a mass of imitators who make the work respectable and exclusionary. The artists and their art become intellectual brand names.

Classical music is a special taste like Greek language or pre-Columbian archeology, not a common culture of reciprocal communication and psychological shorthand.

Paris is great. I stay at the Ritz Paris - I'm good friends with the Director, Frank Klein, and the owner. I lived there 3 years; I was the only foreigner working at Maxim's. They only took French, which was a mistake.

In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a citizen of western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself the truth that the civilisation which surrounds him is a rare exception in the history of the world.

The point of Berlin was that it seemed that only people like you ran the city. You never ran into people who weren't like you - especially when you lived as that kind of American in Berlin connected to the arts.

The art house is an elitist idea.

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.

There is a fuzzy but real distinction that can and I believe should be made, between patriotism, which is attachment to a way of life, and nationalism, which is the insistence that your way of life deserves to rule over other ways of life.

They don't like anyone who isn't Korean, and they don't like each other all that much, either. They're hardheaded, hard-drinking, tough little bastards, 'the Irish of Asia'.

I believe only in French culture and consider everything in Europe that calls itself 'culture' a misunderstanding, not to speak of German culture.

I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already.

I'm sorry - you know, culture is elitist. Culture has to be elitist: it's about seeing and knowing and about knowledge.

The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy.