We [the USA] do have a big nation's problem. We have the problem of a nation that's got two oceans, oceans on either side. People come from all across the globe and want to live here and they want to work here and they want to invest here. And that's a good thing. And they make up this country. But as a people, we [americans] are not highly skilled in languages. We're not highly skilled in knowledge of other cultures. And that's a problem.
Traveling and other cultures provide me with great inspiration, especially unusual people and cultures totally unlike my own. They generate many new ideas for me.
In many other cultures, and certainly in the Eastern world, there's great value put on being, contemplating, and even withdrawing from the world at certain times or for certain periods of time. But we don't really have that in our culture, so it's difficult for many Westerners to learn how to sit down or lie down and just be quiet without going to sleep. We're just not trained to do it.
People have to start talking to know more about other cultures and to understand each other.
The greatest number of drug addicts are to be found in Teheran and in Karachi, not in the West. Not in New York believe it or not. It's the same with the roles of slavery, racism and imperialism in the world. These institutions were present in other cultures. However, it was Western civilization which did something about slavery, about racism and voluntarily dissolved its empires leaving behind a very positive legacy of institutions not to mention buildings and roadways.
In studying other cultures, we learn more about ourselves and our relationship to all things in this world.
Much of the rest of the world has already learned some English. They pretty much understand the American way of doing things, because our culture has been ubiquitous and has been the 500-pound gorilla in the global economy. But the world is far more interrelated than ever before, and no one culture can thrive without the knowledge of how to function in other cultures.
And finally, there is another danger: the emergence of nonideological but very aggressive 'isms,' which are really quite new. Let me at least name them: We all care about human rights, but I am afraid of 'human rightism.' We all want to have a healthy environment, but I see the danger in environmentalism. To put it politically correctly, I admire the second gender, but I fear feminism. We all are enriched by other cultures, but not by multiculturalism. I am aware of the importance of voluntary associations, but I fear NGOism.
In order for humanity to survive in the twenty-first century and beyond, we must nurture rather than repress children's natural curiosity. We must encourage them to be curious, instead of fearful, toward other cultures.
It's amazing that people still feel, 'Oh my gosh, it's a black guy.' We've been here for a long time; let's get used to it. Let's get used to other cultures.
Our incapacity to comprehend other cultures stems from our insistence on measuring things in our own terms.
Travel early and travel often. Live abroad, if you can. Understand cultures other than your own. As your understanding of other cultures increases, your understanding of yourself and your own culture will increase exponentially.
I think that curiosity happened on these reviews where I was just a guest of the reviewer, because it introduced me to new cuisines and to the idea of cooking as a mechanism for studying other cultures and understanding other parts of the world.
Culture is one thing and varnish is another.
I plead for conservation of human culture, which is much more fragile than nature herself. We needn't destroy other cultures with the force of our own.
I wasn't searching for a common denominator - I started wondering about the challenge of working in other cultures. What I reached was the sudden acknowledgment of the universal aspect of filmmaking.
I'm certainly curious about people. As a kid, I moved around a lot. I was raised in a lot of different places, and thanks to working in the movies, I've gotten to keep traveling. I've always been interested in other cultures and languages.
What moves me is neither ethnocentric pride nor sectarian arrogance. I make no claim that Jewish culture is superior to other cultures. But it is mine.
I think the international appeal of SF is quite understandable since the kinds of people who like to read it, are, by the nature of the beast, interested in other cultures, of which other nations on Earth are the closest available example.
The Ice Storm, because of the movie, has had, or is to have, a vigorous life in other cultures.
We know longer live in a homogenous society, it is not black, white, Asian or Latin, it is a melting pot. Until we learn to assimilate and learn about other cultures, we will continue to have racism problems. Of course, there are other '-isms' as our ills. We have sexism, ageism, elitism, homophobia-ism, there are many -isms we have to overcome.
If you are stuck only at your culture, you will miss thousands of good things in other cultures; and more importantly, you will miss many truths!
Mead's anthropology had many other red, white and blue- blooded virtues. One was the common anthropological conceit, out of which she made a career, to the effect that the ultimate value of studying other cultures was the use we could make of them to reconstruct our own - a heady kind of intellectual imperialism, as if the final meaning of others' lives was their significance for us.
I do not want my house to be rounded by walls and my windows to be closed to other cultures. I wish to become familiar with the culture of lands as much as possible but I will not permit them to affect me or shake me from my own status.
Americans, more than any other culture on earth, are cookbook cooks; we learn to make our meals not from any oral tradition, but from a text. The just-wed cook brings to the new household no carefully copied collection of the family's cherished recipes, but a spanking new edition of 'Fannie Farmer' or 'The Joy of Cooking'.