Cultural Pressure Quotes

When I was little, my parents really only wanted me to be a scientist or a doctor; they had never even heard of law school. I think even these days if you were to tell your mother you want to be a fashion designer, or an artist or a writer, a lot of Asian parents would be alarmed because they don't think that's a secure career.

In America, it is difficult to be your own man.

Voices surround us, always telling us to move faster. It may be our boss, our pastor, our parents, our wives, our husbands, our politicians, or, sadly, even ourselves. So we comply. We increase the speed. We live life in the fast lane because we have no slow lanes anymore. Every lane is fast, and the only comfort our culture can offer is more lanes and increased speed limits. The result? Too many of us are running as fast as we can, and an alarming number of us are running much faster than we can sustain.

The worst thing that can happen to anybody in this cultural environment is to fail.

There's this idea that Hollywood sells over and over again: 'If I just looked more like this, I'd be accepted.'

Whoever rises to deliver the inaugural Address of 2013 will speak to a nation in which the American Dream is under profound economic and cultural pressure. This is perhaps best measured by the state of the middle class.

I think one of the things that I picked up from Nigeria is the constant pressure to be excellent. Parents drill in this responsibility towards family, but also a responsibility toward making sure your family name is heralded.

Where I come from, dressing is a culture. When I go back home, I cannot dress bad. I cannot miss, or people will be like, 'What's going on with you, Serge? Did you lose your mind, or what?' That's the culture.

We live not according to reason, but according to fashion.

... in so many Muslim communities now, saving face trumps critical thinking and truth-telling. This is why reform from within Islam is so difficult.

Christians get trees. Jews get bushes. To stay in good standing with the Tribe, you've got to refer to a Christmas tree as a Hanukkah bush.

In the kind of New England I'm from, you are expected to stay and marry somebody from New England - well, Maine, actually - so I think it was seen as a betrayal when I left for New York, which has been my refuge.

Most people who have grown up introverted in this very extroverted culture of ours have had painful experiences of feeling like they are out of step with what's expected of them.

We tell girls to be themselves, but then they have role models - sometimes too many role models - in popular culture who incarnate that kind of disconnectedness from oneself. We are taught to self-hate; we are taught to doubt. Our culture doesn't help us recognize ourselves as amazing beings without changing ourselves.

Because my parents are Muslim, there's no doubt they wished I would marry someone Muslim.

I would say the hardest part in the Latino world is approval from your parents. It's such an intense thing.

America beats on you so hard the whole time. You are constantly being pummeled by other people's rights and their sense of patriotism.

The society of the Culture-Philistines makes life a burden to exceptional men.

I don't think [Dylan and the Beatles] influenced me a lot. I think it was inevitable; they were so powerful that you couldn't really escape the influence.

Fashion is not public opinion, or the result of embodiment of public opinion. It may be that public opinion will condemn the shape of a bonnet, as it may venture to do always, and with the certainty of being right nine times in ten: but fashion will place it upon the head of every woman in America; and, were it literally a crown of thorns, she would smile contentedly beneath the imposition.

The evangelical movement has become just a bit victimized by a success-oriented culture, wanting the church - like the corporation - to be successful.

Those people in New York are not gonna change me none.

I used to pretend I was into speed garage when I hated it.

I'll tell you, in making film, especially when you're an actress, you're always worried about how you look on film, how they light you, always working with your camera people to be at your best, with the expectations of our culture that you always look perfect and beautiful and whatever.

We seem to live a culture that doesn't want blemishes. The vision of most beautiful models... airbrushed in order to be seen as perfect, infects our notion of how literature should be written.