I think that Sufism fits all over the world. The concept is not anything that fits standard Western ideas – it’s always related to culture, to music, to religion. It is a dominant religion in...

Acting school was summer camp, and I needed concentration camp. I had so many different ideas swirling between culture and how to tie things together.

The fear of death is why we build cathedrals, have children, declare war, and watch cat videos online at three a.m.

Viciousness is part of the world we live in, some of us choose to ignore it with the rationalisation of wanting only positivity to flow our way. How selfish we have become! That the pain...

Fundamentalism’s strident denunciation of its opponents is a sign of its weakness, its dogmatic authoritarianism is a pathological mutation of faith.

I remember taking an anthropology class in college and the professor was explaining that there is little ‘sexual dimorphism’ in humans. He meant that there are few outward, observable differences between makes and females. At...

The downfall of the attempts of governments and leaders to unite mankind is found in this- in the wrong message that we should see everyone as the same. This is the root of the failure...

The process of secularisation arises not from the loss of faith but from the loss of social interest in the world of faith. It begins the moment men feel that religion is irrelevant to the...

The moral nihilism of celebrity culture is played out on reality television shows, most of which encourage a dark voyeurism into other people’s humiliation, pain, weakness, and betrayal.

music of decline” had sounded, as in that wonderful Chinese fable; like a thrumming bass on the organ its reverberations faded slowly out over decades; its throbbing could be heard in the corruption of the...

…I just don’t think we could ever get our heads around the concept of learning to love a stranger”. But you already do, the Indians replied. You didn’t choose your siblings, and yet you learned...

I knew that Sundays in England aren’t just ordinary dull Sundays, the same the world over, which demand that one simply tiptoe through without disturbing them or paying them the least attention, they are vaster...

The opportunity and the concept of merging music culture with actual boxing is exciting. It’s bringing a younger demographic to the sport.

Comics are drawings, not photographs, and as such they present a subjective view of reality.

We will continue to fight the scourge of terrorism against humanity and reject the culture of extremism and violence in any form or shape, from whatever source or place, regardless of justifications or motives, being...

Simply put, here amid the kingdoms of this world we have no continuing city. That’s why we dare not become attached to the passing values of any human culture.

The way a culture treats women in birth is a good indicator of how well women and their contributions to society are valued and honored.

I meet people and they enforce me their culture and then I choose to fly away and I meet other people and these people force me their religion and I wanna fly away. I meet...

Christianity, in contrast, is for all cultures. This is a theme of the New Testament, St. John’s vision of the redeemed in Revelation 7. Christianity is for every tribe, every nation, every language, every time,...

I had brought from Paris the national prejudice against Italian music; but I had also received from nature that acute sensibility against which prejudices are powerless. I soon contracted the passion it inspires in all...

Chinese culture has a lot of virtues that are tremendously valuable to not only us as Asian-Americans, but also the world in general.

We’ll have opportunities to experience Appalachian culture and learn why poverty is an issue there. As I understand it, just 7,500 people live there and about 20 percent of them live below poverty level.

Character displays “the weighty impatience of having to explain something that should already be understood.

…Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable—the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo...

I suppose it’s not a social norm, and not a manly thing to do — to feel, discuss feelings. So that’s what I’m giving the finger to. Social norms and stuff…what good are social norms,...

I have no definable history before I was abandoned and taken in by the orphanage in Hong Kong. I truly am a blank sheet. I have been disconnected from my ancestors. I don’t know who...

One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own nasty way.

Let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us. WE BE BAD. We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended...

Goth culture, as mired in the past as it is, even it goes through changes, so Goth when I was growing up is not what it is now. When I think of Goth culture as...

By acquiescing in an act that causes such suffering to a living creature, who among us is not diminished?

What these people were trying to create or re-create here in this new world is beyond me. I can’t put myself in their minds or their hearts, but I can sympathize with their struggle for...

We do not have to spend money and go hungry and struggle and study to become sensual; we always were. We need not believe we must somehow earn good erotic care; we always deserved it....

Needs are imposed by nature. Wants are sold by society.

The deal with multiculturalism is that the only culture you’re allowed to disapprove of is your own.

Mind being the seat of the soul, and literature being the expression of the mind, literature, it follows, is the soul of an age, the surviving and immortal part of it.

Culture is not trivial. It is not a decoration or artifice, the songs we sing or even the prayers we chant. It is a blanket of comfort that gives meaning to lives. It is a...

The philosopher cannot seriously put to himself questions that his civilization has not lived.

America fears the unshaven legs, the unshaven men’s cheeks, the aroma of perspiration, and the limp prick. Above all it fears the limp prick.

No culture that has ever embraced homosexuality has survived.

There’s a lot about New York that is unique, and there’s always a culture and a subculture going on everywhere.

In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo.

What makes this program not just historically relevant but also immensely entertaining are the personal reflections and pop culture content that will be key components of Back in the Day . Central to the concept...

Giving Back reframes portraits of philanthropy.

The only interesting ideas are heresies

It could be said that a liberal education has the nature of a bequest, in that it looks upon the student as the potential heir of a cultural birthright, whereas a practical education has the...

As we search for a less extractive and polluting economic order, so that we may fit agriculture into the economy of a sustainable culture, community becomes the locus and metaphor for both agriculture and culture.

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

All literature becomes a sacred text.

One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.

The French believe that all errors are distant, someone else’s fault. Americans believe that there is no distance, no difference, and therefore that there are no errors, that any troubles are simple misunderstandings, consequent on...