I haven't met everyone from all different cultures, but I do know Aussies are very tough.
I'm deeply disturbed by the ways in which all of our cultures are demonizing the other. This is why I'm launching a new initiative, and it's to help all of us, myself included, to counteract the tendency to otherize.
The ego must be able to listen attentively and to give itself, without any further design or purpose, to that inner urge toward growth. . . . People living in cultures more securely rooted than our own have less trouble in understanding that it is necessary to give up the utilitarian attitude of conscious planning in order to make way for the inner growth of the personality.
Modernity sees humanity as having ascended from what is inferior to it - life begins in slime and ends in intelligence - whereas traditional cultures see it as descended from its superiors. As the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins put the matter: We are the only people who assume that we have ascended from apes. Everybody else take it for granted that they are descended from gods.
In both business and personal life, I've always found that travel inspires me more than anything else I do. Evidence of the languages, cultures, scenery, food, and design sensibilities that I discover all over the world can be found in every piece of my jewelry.
When Mrs. Bush was First Lady, she went all over the Mideast talking about breast cancer awareness and the need for early screening. She did this in places where the cultures prohibit such discussion or even detection efforts.
If someone says that they have to 'tolerate' cultural differences and cultural groupings different from themselves then that may make it difficult, at the same time, to condemn unjust practices within those cultures.
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've always been very, very supportive of fan cultures. I'm a fan of all kinds of things.
For a writer you have to be interested in different cultures, different backgrounds. You are not there to write only about your village. You're there to show a bit of your village, but also to understand other villages.
What I find more remarkable, however, is how readily many people in our society believe outlandish and unsubstantiated urban myths and conspiracies (Pop Rocks and Coke, JFK assassination, AIDS is man-made, etc. ), yet disregard thousands of personal and consistent testimonies of miracles and near-death experiences from people throughout all cultures and religions.
Modern man has been in search of a new language of form to satisfy new longings and aspirations - longings for mental appeasement, aspirations to unity, harmony, serenity - an end to his alienation from nature. All these arts of remote times or strange cultures either give or suggest to the modern artist forms which he can adapt to his needs, the elements of a new iconography.
He who cherishes the value of cultures cannot fail to be a pacifist.
Curiously, only in sports do we agree to eschew technological advances, making rules, for example, to limit the power potential of baseball bats. We understand that technology will ruin our games, but we do not understand that it can also ruin cultures.
What I supported when I was a young man, was that the solution to bring justice to all in South Africa, was to build a little Europe there. Was to create so many nation states as there are actual nations, each with their own cultures, each with their own languages, that is what separate development tried and wanted to achieve.
I got a great grandma. Her name is Pearl, and she was at one time married to an Indian chief, who, in a wonderful crossing of cultures, she integrated some of his, and some of hers, and um, it was a combination of peyote and preserves, and it was this hallucinogenic jam.
Negative people often tend to create negative cultures whereas positive corporate cultures are created by positive people.
The fact that different cultures have different practices no more refutes [moral] objectivism than the fact that water flows in different directions in different places refutes the law of gravity
One of my few virtues - I don't have a lot of them - would be a deep sense of curiosity. I'm interested in how other people live in other places; I'm interested in other cultures.
Sales-driven cultures can really differentiate you from the majority of your competition. That doesn’t mean being salesperson oriented, just sales oriented: winning deals, smelling the blood and going in for the kill.