Cultural Traits Quotes

The chief of these [problems governing Korea] arise from the character of the Koreans. Many of them are crooked. They want "squeeze" from the Japanese and their own people. They are lazy.

Americans are instinctively grandiose.

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

I think American guys tend to be a bit more forward, a bit more chatty and open than the Brits. The Brits seem to have a darker sense of humor, though I have met some Americans who have adopted bits of the British dry sense of humor as well.

The French are very individualistic.

That's how the Germans are.... The aristocrats at the top hard as glass, cold as ice, servants of the King, the working masses willing, pliable, sentimental, susceptible to brutality, the middle class educated and cowardly to the point of servility.

Zimbabweans, I've come to believe, we are very passive-aggressive people. We don't like conflict; we don't like confrontation, so we find all sorts of ways of avoiding that conflict and confrontation. We are not allowed to talk about bad things that go on in families.

Canadians are the people who learned to live without the bold accents of the natural ego-trippers of other lands.

To make a revolution is not in the grain of our people's nature.

I get angry real quick, but I also cool down just as fast. Albanians don't want to deal with anything in the moment.

An Irish man fights before he reasons, a Scotchman reasons before he fights, an Englishman is not particular as to the order of precedence, but will do either to accommodate his customers.

You'll find Swedes - maybe not as much as the Finns - thriving in melancholy.

The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.

The Americans are just more enthusiastic and more likely to engage in hyperbole.

Race is an invention, not a noticeable genetic presence, and cultural traits are brute concoctions of the social sciences.

People in America, when listening to radio, like to lean forward. People in Britain like to lean back.

A person from Northern Ireland is naturally cautious.

The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument, the more intense will be its love of music.

When you start to meet with ordinary people you understand that a Russian person, really any person from Russia, a Tatar, a Mordvin, a Chechen, a Dagestani, they are very open people, even a little naive. But there's one defining trait that probably all peoples have, although it comes out especially strongly in us. That's a drive toward fairness. It's one of the dominating, I think, traits in the mentality of a person from Russia, a Russian person.

But the English are different, and they don't know how to be other than different.

Southerners have many fine qualities, charm and civility among them, and a sense of the tragic.

The English are potentially very aggressive, very violent

The British tend to shy away from the spotlight. We don't like being singled out in any way, and I think that is something which is important for me to learn to do.

The happiest people I know as a nation are the Burmese; their brightness and cheeriness are proverbial. Kindness to animals is one of their greatest 'weaknesses'; no Burmese will kill an animal, even if it is to put it out of pain.

Although the rudiments of snobbery are there, its finer developments are basically alien to the Australian soul - that is, if Australians have a soul; many people believe that they are too matter-of-fact and down-to-earth to have such fancy commodities.