cultural transcendence Quotes

I am neither of the East nor of the West, no boundaries exist within my breast.

I already had the sense that I was someone who was more spiritual than specifically religious. ... I'm really interested in those things that are more far-reaching than culture, nationality, race, religion.

Art is an action against death. It is a denial of death.

I don't really believe in political art. I feel in my heart the purpose of art transcends cultural and class and politics. I think something like the Sistine Chapel is something that goes beyond just being a Christian thing. It transcends its Christianity and becomes sort of a universal beauty. And I think that's true of music and art and literature.

Great art transcends its culture and touches on that which is eternal.

The advantage of doing away with words is that you can reach out to any part of the world.

I aim to write songs in a way that you don't have to have gone to Ghana to relate to it, you really just have to have a heart.

The great minds, the great works transcend all limitations of time, of language, and of race, and the scholar can never feel initiated into the company of the elect until he can approach all of life's problems from the cosmopolitan standpoint.

The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.

Great art always transcends its culture, while lesser art merely reflects it.

The fact that 'Astro Boy' appealed to me as a boy in America was proof that the story and character transcend cultural stereotypes.

Whatever is true transcends culture and religion. We do not talk of Christian physics or Moslem Algebra.

American movies are often very good at mining those great underlying myths that make films robustly travel across class, age, gender, culture.

In a way, this is a definition of shamanism. A shaman is a person who by some means has gotten out of their own culture.

Art transcends war. Art is the language of God and war is the barking of men. Beethoven is bigger than war.

I'm bugged because I can't believe I can't speak every language there is. But I feel I can when I sit and am with somebody, and I can dance for them. Because dance is dialogue without language.

I don't think of myself as an American; I see myself as a human being.

I try to find the core values that are so fundamental that they transcend ethnic identity. That doesn't mean I run from it. I embrace African-American culture and I love it and embrace it, but it is a part of a human identity. So I'm always trying to make a larger human statement.

How is it that, a full two centuries after Jane Austen finished her manuscript, we come to the world of Pride and Prejudice and find ourselves transcending customs, strictures, time, mores, to arrive at a place that educates, amuses, and enthralls us? It is a miracle. We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind.

Music knows no barrier of age or culture. It isn’t about being politically correct or even making a statement. Music is what appeals to the ears and touches your soul.

Science has helped us to understand and master ourselves, creating an elevated new form of human life, the wealth and beauty of which cannot be pictured today by the keenest imagination.

But the dance speaks to everyone. Otherwise it wouldn't work.

I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.

I think transcending our cultures is going to be extraordinarily necessary for our survival. I don't think we can carry our cultures through the keyhole of the stretch of the next millennium