#culture

I’m very headstrong. Once I’ve caught fire, there’s no dousing the flames—all engines full speed ahead. ↗

— Adachi Zenko

#culture #gardens #japan #art

If privacy had a gravestone it might read: 'Don't Worry. This Was for Your Own Good. ↗

— John Twelve Hawks

#science-fiction #technology #science

I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially. ↗

— E.B. White

#nature #science #nature

Women's liberation is one thing, but the permeation of anti-male sentiment in post-modern popular culture - from our mocking sitcom plots to degrading commercial story lines - stands testament to the ignorance of society. Fair or not, as the lead gender that never requested such a role, the historical male reputation is quite balanced. For all of their perceived wrongs, over centuries they've moved entire civilizations forward, nurtured the human quest for discovery and industry, and led humankind from inconvenient darkness to convenient modernity. Navigating the chessboard that is human existence is quite a feat, yet one rarely acknowledged in modern academia or media. And yet for those monumental achievements, I love and admire the balanced creation that is man for all his strengths and weaknesses, his gifts and his curses. I would venture to say that most wise women do. ↗

— Tiffany Madison

#feminism #life #maleness #modernity #philosophy

Whoever tells the best story shapes the culture. ↗

— Erwin Raphael McManus

#storytelling #storytelling

Gay diversity is like the Village People. You can all wear different stupid outfits as long as you sing the same stupid song. ↗

— Jack Malebranche

#gay #politics #diversity

I am not interested in living in a city where there isn't a production by Samuel Beckett running. ↗

— Edward Albee

#culture #drama #samuel-beckett #stage #theater

American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant. ↗

— H.L. Mencken

#journalism #media #media

The Procrustean bed. . .suggests itself with dispiriting aptness as a metaphor for the Culture Wars, right down to the blandishments with which Procrustes must have lured his guests over the threshold. (I picture him as a handsome fellow with a large vocabulary and an oleaginous tongue, not unlike the chairmen of many English departments.) There's just one crucial difference. Sometimes Procrustes lopped off his victims, and sometimes he stretched them, but the Culture Wars always lop. I have never seen cultural politics enlarge a work of literature, only diminish it. ↗

— Anne Fadiman

#culture-wars #political-correctness #procrustes #censorship

Joining a sub-culture, any sub-culture, for whatever reason, is as I see it never a legitimate self-expression. It is always a result of sheep mentality; a wish to belong somewhere. ↗

— Varg Vikernes

#individuality #subculture #conformity