Cultural Distinction Quotes

The two ethnic groups that remain fundamentally different from the Han Chinese - in terms of history, culture, language, religion and physical appearance - are the Uighurs and Tibetans. In these two groups, the Han Chinese come face to face with difference.

The downside to defining everything Chinese as different than American is that all things Chinese then become exotic.

Well, the most important thing about Islam is that we have to differentiate between two kinds of Islam. The first one is the institution of Islam... second, the culture of Islam.

Southern Baptists are VERY, VERY Southern, and black Baptists are VERY, VERY black

It's the South that maintains the idea that they're different, which is interesting because nobody else really cares.

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.

I think too many people in Hollywood perhaps fail to make a distinction between the political side of Israel and the notion of the country. And they can be separate things.

Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.

Well, there's nothing strange about Americans as a whole. But, Angelinos are different!

Popular culture is seductive; high culture is imperious.

The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing - a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction.

On the same line of reasoning, if Australians were to be Australians, or rather if Australians were as separate from any other nation as Australia from any other land, there would be no jealousy between them on England's account.

The French are a race of individuals. There is no type.

I think there is a very strong sense of Irish identity, and I think partly that's to do with the fact that we have evolved differently from Britain and other countries in Europe.

A community having the breadth and scope of a people still cannot claim to be an ethnic community unless and until there emerges from its mentality a distinctive culture particularized by the community's special character.

All the rest of the world uses the word electricity. They've borrowed the word from English. But we Chinese have our own word for it!

Poland is different from the other so-called socialist countries. We have a different background. Poland belongs to the West, not the East. We belong to the Mediterranean, Latin culture, not to the Byzantine, which is very different and which you find in Bulgaria and even parts of Czechoslovakia and, of course, Romania.

Popular culture is a contradiction in terms. If it's popular, it's not culture.

Every race is totally different.

Putin imagined it would be different. So, like many Russian leaders before him, he imagined that Ukraine was basically Russia, but they speak with a funny accent. Actually, it's not Russia; it has a different identity. It has a very different language. Russians don't automatically understand Ukrainian. And, in particular, the way Ukraine has developed over the last two decades is different from the way Russia has developed.

I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds.

Canada has, at times, represented itself as a country in a valiant struggle against powerful and menacing agents that are indifferent to its special practices and sensibilities - most especially American culture. It's the old, outdated garrison mentality.

When people say to me, 'What do you think of rap music?', my answer is, 'There's no such thing. There's rap, and there's music.'

I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.

In the soul of a Russian person there is always a drive toward some kind of lofty moral ideal, lofty moral values. That definitely sets us apart, and I'm certain it's in a good way.