The problem with Indians is that we have lost the habit of thinking big!
Intellectual property is an important legal and cultural issue. Society as a whole has complex issues to face here: private ownership vs. open source, and so on.
I do believe that America's deepest political sickness is that it is a self-righteous nation.
Having been hit by drug addiction, knowing how many are hit by it and what a big problem it is in our neighborhoods and our culture, I feel a responsibility to do something. I can see what's wrong with the system - that we have to recognize mental illness as we do cancer or broken bones - and how we need to make it better.
Just black executives have a bias against older artists. We don't respect our elders. That's not because of white people. That's because of black leadership. We just have that problem, and it's something that I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to conquer.
There's still a tremendous amount of homophobia in our culture. It's regrettable, it's stupid, it's heartless, and it's immoral, but there it is.
The misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it.
We're dealing with that question now, in the media. How does the judicial system work? There's never going to be a clear-cut answer, but it's a conversation and a conflict in the community. It's not a white thing or a black thing. It's a society thing and a culture thing, and we've gotta figure it out.
No, the Ram Mandir issue is not a political one. It is a national and cultural issue. We would like to see a grand Ram temple come up at the place of the birth of Lord Ram in Ayodhya.
The role of government is, I believe, the most potent but underappreciated cultural issue in American politics.
Whenever you hear anyone talking about a cultural or even about a human problem, you should never forget to inquire who the speaker really is. The more general the problem, the more the person will smuggle his or her own personal psychology into the account he or she gives of it.
It’s a very difficult cultural issue. Why don’t Americans save?
America has one of the lowest personal savings rate in the entire world.
We have a problem with drugs? Let's declare war on drugs! We have a problem with crime? Let's declare war on crime! We have a problem with violence? Let's declare war on violence! The deeply ingrained American attitude that we can solve any problem w/enough force creates, feeds, & rewards the epidemic of violence we are currently experiencing.
Many people in the West do not realise how oppressive some Muslim states are - both for men and for women. This is a cultural issue, not an Islamic one.
The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than "newness") and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity).
This country has a complex about age. It's unbelievable. If you're over thirty, you've had it in this country.
Literature in France seems to be undergoing a crisis now, and nothing comes immediately to mind.
When even those who should be happy by any reasonable measure are also not happy, there's got to be a serious systemic problem in humanity's culture.
My last experience of film-making was Tickets, a three-episode film in Italy, the third of which is directed by myself. It's not for me to judge whether it's a good film or a bad film, but what I could say is that nobody had a cultural or linguistic issue with what was produced.
Dullness is more than a religious issue, it is a cultural issue. Our entire culture has become dull. Dullness is the absence of the light of our souls. Look around. We have lost the sparkle in our eyes, the passion in our marriages, the meaning in our work, the joy of our faith.
I think that ageism is a cultural illness; it's not a personal illness.