Cultural Differences Quotes

“How you look at it is pretty much how you'll see it”
― Rasheed Ogunlaru

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
― Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Let us dedicate this new era to mothers around the world, and also to the mother of all mothers -- Mother Earth. It is up to us to keep building bridges to bring the world closer together, and not destroy them to divide us further apart. We can pave new roads towards peace simply by understanding other cultures. This can be achieved through traveling, learning other languages, and interacting with others from outside our borders. Only then will one truly discover how we are more alike than different. Never allow language or cultural traditions to come between brothers and sisters. The same way one brother may not like his sister's choice of fashion or hairstyle, he will never hate her for her personal style or music preference. If you judge a man, judge only his heart. And if you should do so, make sure you use the truth in your conscience when weighing one's character. Do not measure anybody strictly based on the bad you see in them and ignore all the good.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“We need no language to laugh”
― Janaki Sooriyarachchi, චන්දු තමී

“You big ugly. You too empty. You desert with your nothing nothing nothing. You scorched suntanned. Old too quickly. Acres of suburbs watching the telly. You bore me. Freckle silly children. You nothing much. With your big sea. Beach beach beach. I’ve seen enough already. You dumb dirty city with bar stools. You’re ugly. You silly shopping town. You copy. You too far everywhere. You laugh at me. When I came this woman gave me a box of biscuits. You try to be friendly but you’re not very friendly. You never ask me to your house. You insult me. You don’t know how to be with me. Road road tree tree. I came from crowded and many. I came from rich. You have nothing to offer. You’re poor and spread thin. You big. So what. I’m small. It’s what’s in. You silent on Sunday. Nobody on your streets. You dead at night. You go to sleep too early. You don’t excite me. You scare me with your hopeless. Asleep when you walk. Too hot to think. You big awful. You don’t match me. You burnt out. You too big sky. You make me a dot in the nowhere. You laugh with your big healthy. You want everyone to be the same. You’re dumb. You do like anybody else. You engaged Doreen. You big cow. You average average. Cold day at school playing around at lunchtime. Running around for nothing. You never accept me. For your own. You always ask me where I’m from. You always ask me. You tell me I look strange. Different. You don’t adopt me. You laugh at the way I speak. You think you’re better than me. You don’t like me. You don’t have any interest in another country. Idiot centre of your own self. You think the rest of the world walks around without shoes or electric light. You don’t go anywhere. You stay at home. You like one another. You go crazy on Saturday night. You get drunk. You don’t like me and you don’t like women. You put your arm around men in bars. You’re rough. I can’t speak to you. You burly burly. You’re just silly to me. You big man. Poor with all your money. You ugly furniture. You ugly house. You relaxed in your summer stupor. All year. Never fully awake. Dull at school. Wait for other people to tell you what to do. Follow the leader. Can’t imagine. Workhorse. Thick legs. You go to work in the morning. You shiver on a tram.”
― Ania Walwicz

“Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice.”
― Montaigne

“Сильные чувства — безнациональны. Уже одно это говорит в пользу интернационализма. Радость, горе, страх, болезнь — лишены национальной окраски. Не абсурдно ли звучит:

“Он разрыдался, как типичный немец”.”
― Сергей Довлатов, Собрание сочинений в 3-х томах. Том 3

“After a day of watching the two-legs interact from within their midst, she was certain that they could talk as well as any wolf. Unlike wolves, however, they mostly used their mouths, a thing she found limiting. How could you tell someone to keep away from your food when your own mouth was full?”
― Jane Lindskold, Through Wolf's Eyes

“Timothy Dunnigan: The kinds of metaphorical language that we use to describe the Hmong say far more about us, and our attachment to our own frame of reference, than they do about the Hmong.”
― Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

“Hillalum wondered what sort of people were forged by living under such conditions; did they escape madness? Did they grow accustomed to this? Would the children born under a solid sky scream if they saw the ground beneath their feet?”
― Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

“I thought," Shad said slowly, "that she was offended if you referred to Blind Seer or Elation as her pets."
"True," Derian assured him. "Absolutely the correct etiquette—to her face. However, well… When I first met Firekeeper, less than a year ago, her relationships with animals fell into pretty much two categories: those you ate and those you befriended. I remember that she thought we were pretty clever for bringing horses along so we wouldn't need to hunt our meat. It took me a while to show her they had other uses.”
― Jane Lindskold, Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart

“Often we may even smile or laugh at adversity, but all people share the same passions. They are merely manifest differently according to one's culture and conditioning.”
― Yasuo Kuwahara, Kamikaze: A Japanese Pilot's Own Spectacular Story of the Famous Suicide Squadrons

“Kagan's law of first contact,'You'll surprise you more than they will.”
― Janet Kagan, Uhura's Song

“You have no tail!" said Brightspot. her own whipped suddenly forward; she stared, first at it, then at Wilson."How do you manage?”
― Janet Kagan, Uhura's Song

“OLD MAN: In Africa, people are sadder about the death of an old man than about that of a newborn baby. The old man represented a wealth of experience that might have benefited the tribe, whereas the newborn baby had not lived and could not even be aware of dying. In Europe, people are sad about the newborn baby because they think he might well have done wonderful things if he had lived. On the other hand, they pay little attention to the death of the old man, who had already lived his life anyway.

--Edmond Wells
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELATIVE AND ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE”
― Bernard Werber, Empire of the Ants

“I don't want her to know the truth about us."
"I'm merely going to explain to explain that I'm not Nathaniel's mistress."
"You can't talk about mistresses to a well-bred Englishwoman. It violates every propriety."
"To speak in a forthright manner violates propriety?" She rose to stare at him with thinly veiled amusements. "No wonder you English lost the colonies. What with all the lying and the 'propriety' and the evasions, how do you ever get anything done?"
As she crossed the box to sit down beside Evelina, he stared after her in fascinated amazement. Americans were mad—that’s all there was to it.”
― Sabrina Jeffries, Married to the Viscount

“English words made only from twenty-six characters? Are English a bit lazy or what? We have fifty thousand characters in Chinese.”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

“there is very little 'of course' when it comes to custom”
― Janet Kagan, Uhura's Song

“Traveling is not only the art of getting lost, but true travelers, in a sense, never return home. If they do return, they never see home the same way they did before leaving. They begin to see the foreignness of home after experiencing being at home in other foreign lands.
Traveling, I have learned, is not all about the touristy and the beautiful places as we see them in tourist guides. Traveling can be frightening in many ways, most important of which is the realization of how much sadness, pain, impoverishment, and despair exist next to, behind, under, over, and above the mountains, the blue lakes, the pristine beaches, the highly rated hotels and restaurants, the well-designed museums and historic and cultural sites, the fancy shops that, in many places, most locals can neither access nor afford. There are places so sad that the fanciest building one can see there is the airport! There are other places where the airports are run down and depressing, but once you step out of the airport, you discover that such places are full of life, meaning, and physical and spiritual nourishment. There are countries, namely the developed countries, where everything looks shiny and perfect, yet as soon as you enter, you encounter so much loneliness, depression, hate, racism, and lifelessness. Things are never as they appear at first glance. Traveling leaves us with more questions than answers – it is so bittersweet."

[From “Can We Travel Without Being Tourists?” published on CounterPunch on March 15, 2024]”
― Louis Yako

“Is it fair to say that traveling is life itself? It is like seeing endless beauty, pain, desolation, beautiful hearts and minds, and nature through the windows of a fast-moving train where everything is fleeting and impossible to capture."

[From “Can We Travel Without Being Tourists?” published on CounterPunch on March 15, 2024]”
― Louis Yako

“Portekiz'de zaman yavaş akar”
― Gökhan Bozkurt, Portekiz Hakkında Her Şey

“Portekiz keyif, huzur ve mutluluk ülkesidir”
― Gökhan Bozkurt, Portekiz Hakkında Her Şey

“She took another step, wielding her strange foreign femaleness like a force field...”
― Gina Wilkinson, When the Apricots Bloom

“Els Moretti no tenien res en contra d'aquella gent, ni del pragmatisme que arrossegaven a l'es-quena i que havia possibilitat la creació i la grandesa d'aquell país, ells mateixos es consideraven aventurers i concebien la vida com una conquesta contínua, però pensaven que en se-gons quines coses havia arribat el moment de redreçar-lo. La pràctica i la funcionalitat no ho justificaven tot. I aque-lla nació s'havia quedat enganxada a la inèrcia de la pressa, tothom anava corrents d'un lloc a l'altre, com si dugueren una tribu d'indis al darrere: s'engolien carn picada en forma de salsitxes o d'hamburgueses per no perdre el temps rose-gant-la, atapeïen els transports públics i els ascensors per guanyar espai, llegien els periòdics mentre caminaven a en-tropessons pels carrers, es prenien el café abrasint i arreaven a córrer cap a la faena. Però ningú no s'havia adonat que ja no hi quedaven indis d'aquells. Els indis d'ara eren les empreses implacables, els llargs horaris laborals, els salaris que curte-javen, les hores extraordinàries, la pluriocupació, les lletres dels crèdits que vencien cada més i l'ambició compartida del somni americà.”
― Francesc Bodí, L’única veritat

“While many of us pursue comfort through upgraded plane tickets, luxurious hotels, and fine dining experiences, authentic comfort runs deeper. It encompasses how we carry ourselves, express our unique identities, and navigate the complex web of culture and fashion in diverse destinations.”
― Anastasia Pash, Travel With Style: Master the Art of Stylish and Functional Travel Capsules

“What looks to Westerners like Asian deference, in other words, is actually a deeply felt concern for the sensibilities of others. As the psychologist Harris Bond observes, “It is only those from an explicit tradition who would label [the Asian] mode of discourse ‘selfeffacement.’ Within this indirect tradition it might be labeled ‘relationship honouring.’ ” And relationship honoring leads to social dynamics that can seem remarkable from a Western perspective. It’s because of relationship honoring, for example, that social anxiety disorder in Japan, known as taijin kyofusho, takes the form not of excessive worry about embarrassing oneself, as it does in the United States, but of embarrassing others.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“There's also dessert--- sorry, I mean the mizugashi course. So please take your time,' said Koishi, shrugging her shoulders.
'That's right, Koishi. There's no such thing as "dessert" in Japanese cuisine. The fruit served at the end of the meal is called mizugashi. We're not in France, after all!' said Tae, her nostrils flaring.
'Really, Tae, you never change, do you? Always fussing over the strangest things... I'm not sure it really matters,' said Nobuko, setting down her bowl.
'No, it does matter. If you mess around with language like that, it's culture that suffers. Traditional Japanese sweet dishes are in decline precisely because people insist on calling them English words like "dessert"!”
― Hisashi Kashiwai, The Kamogawa Food Detectives

“In short: making itihasa into history would destroy our past, because, as the world shows us today, the best way to destroy the past of a people is to give them history.”
― SN Balagangadhara

“In short: making itihasa into history would destroy our past, because, as the world shows us today, the best way to destroy the past of a people is to give them history.”
― S.N. Balagangadhara, What does it mean to be 'Indian'?

“To transcend culture is the beginning of culture.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator