Clifton Fadiman Quotes

I say the same thing that I've said for decades now, which is: don't go over to Japan trying to change it, thinking that you know better. Go there trying to understand.

The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.

If you go in Spain, you have to play with another style. The English culture is the English culture. If you come here, you have to play in this style.

Wherever you go, respect the local culture or you will suffer.

Everything in Asia is a culture shock, it's very different from North America, but it's great to be forced into a situation to meet new people and learn new techniques.

I think when you move to a country like the U.S., you need to understand the culture, to understand how people see the game, and adapt yourself.

Travelers learn not just foreign customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs and novel forms of government. They learn, if they are lucky, humility.

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.

There are cultural issues everywhere - in Bangladesh, Latin America, Africa, wherever you go. But somehow when we talk about cultural differences, we magnify those differences.

Seriously, some Americans just shouldn't leave the country.

In some ways England is more liberal than France, but I also find it more intrusive. But when you go abroad you have to accept the ways of where you live. I have to respect that.

I try to study the background of the country I am in and what were my hits there, so I can at least give them some of what they want. It's like a wedding - give them something old, something new, something borrowed and definitely something blue!

Travelers never think that they are the foreigners

The unknown makes people uncomfortable. And even living in a city that's as cosmopolitan as New York City is, there's so many things I don't know about other cultures, even though I encounter other cultures - maybe even 18 or 19 of them - when I get on a subway car every day.

No matter how certain I am about some culture or some group of people, my opinions are only as accurate as the amount of time I've spent with them.

I always say the diversity, and culture is the one thing I love the most about the U.S. How you can travel across one borderline and you end up with this whole new set of people that I find super-interesting and great on tour.

I like to live like a local. When you are somewhere, you have to try to take the culture of that place and try to adapt.

I understand different cultures because I have travelled a lot.

I was very surprised when I first started spending time in America. The culture shock was something I wasn't prepared for. I had a lot of work to do to try to begin to understand this enormous and complex country that I thought would be an easy process.

Surely one advantage of traveling is that, while it removes much prejudice against foreigners and their customs, it intensifies tenfold one's appreciation of the good at home.

I'm not afraid to look like a big, hairy, smelly, foreign devil in Tokyo, though I do my best not to, I really do.

The two cultures of East and West are very different, and the priorities are very different. So when you understand that - if you are from this side or this side - when you understand that the other is different than you, and you respect these differences, you can build communication.

The films I enjoy seeing are those that reveal lives I was unaware of... in different cultures or whatever.

When in Rome, I must do as the Romans do. When in America, make Bikram copyright and trademark.

Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.