culture

If men can be made to understand that society, with its rigid codes and stratifications, is in its confused infancy rather than in the apex of its development; if they can be made to understand that the conflicts and contradictions of society can only be resolved by scientific long-range planning-then we will succeed in maintaining what civilization we have and drive onward to greater culture.

It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of "culture."

How many thorns of human nature - hard, sharp, lifeless protuberances that tear and wound us, narrow prejudices, bristling conceits that repel and disgust us - are arrested developments, calcified tendencies, buds of promise that should have lifted a branch up into the sunny day with fruit; and flowers to delight the heart of men, but now all grown hard, petrified, for want of culture and a congenial soil and climate.

Every man's ability may be strengthened or increased by culture.

All the same, they [books] do serve some purpose. Culture doesn't save anything or anyone, it doesn't justify. But it's a product of man: he projects himself into it, he recognizes himself in it; that critical mirror alone offers him his image.

On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture, a civilization, a new way of Iiving together among men.

Until he [man] has become fully human, until he learns to conduct himself as a member of the earth, he will continue to create gods who will destroy him. The tragedy of Greece lies not in the destruction of a great culture but in the abortion of a great vision.

Discreetly keep most of your radical opinions to yourself. When with people be a listener a large part of the time. Be considerate in every word and act, and resist the tendency to say clever things. The best evidence of your culture is the tone and temper of your conversation.

The world's culture is changing, adapting. People are keeping what's good in a culture, and sweeping out the rest.

Recently the country has seen too much of our legislators, seeing them as a gaggle of check-kiting, judge-smearing deadbeats who don't pay their restaurant bills but raise their pay in the middle of the night. Many Americans-this columnist included-hitherto said tax increases are justified by the budget deficit now say: Give that mob more money? Never. Not a nickel of new taxes until term limits change the political culture on Capital Hill.