Cultural Taboo Quotes

Being a conservative in Hollywood is like walking into a shooting range with a bull's-eye attached to your body. There are more of us than you would believe, but if you want to keep working, you feel like you have to keep quiet.

The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece, and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which such activity is not taboo suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any sort of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic in the species.

Nudity is a problem for Americans. It disrupts our social exchange.

Why I talked about political correctness: the colonial is now such a major taboo that any achievement of the colonial period, or any generosity implied in colonialism, is again fundamentally neglected or fundamentally not recognised. That's crazy, because history is a series of layers, and you cannot say, "This layer I support and this layer I cancel." History is history and you cannot retrospectively manipulate it.

Eating people is wrong

I was in Asia and people asked me about being considered sex symbol. I don't know if that's good or not, because where I come from, sex isn't something you're allowed to talk about.

There is no word more "dangerous" than liberalism, because to oppose it is the new "unforgivable sin."

Shaking hands with the strangers of opposite sex is forbidden

In Arab Islamic society, it is traditionally taboo to criticize the lifestyle or personal philosophy of any practicing Muslim.

Being a single mother in the late 1950s was a very shocking thing - and dreadful thing - for people.

I think the biggest insult, the worst way you can offend a Mexican, is to insult their mother. A mother is the most sacred thing in life.

When we filmed the premiere episode of 'United Shades of America,' it was like we were turning over a rock in the woods. The KKK was not part of the national conversation. They were really just a punchline for comedians when you needed to let the audience know something was really, really, really racist.

Americans are shy about the body.

To be slapped with a shoe is a dirty insult in the Muslim world.

If a people have no word for something, either it does not matter to them or it matters too much to talk about.

What's life without risks? When I made 'Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam,' everybody said in India you can never have a husband say that I am uniting my wife with her lover. The male audience would reject it, and it is a male audience and hero-oriented industry.

Despite the fact that an Indonesian island chicken has probably had a much more natural life than one raised on a battery farm in England, people who wouldn't think twice about buying something oven-ready become much more upset about a chicken that they've been on a boat with, so there is probably buried in the Western psyche a deep taboo about eating anything you've been introduced to socially.

Have you ever read the back of the Newman's Diavolo pasta sauce? Dad on the front is dressed like the devil with a little beard and horns. He says that he sells his soul to the devil for the recipe. It was banned in the South. They thought it was an abomination.

Anyone who expresses anti-Semitic ideas in Poland is like a person who steps on a grave - a despicable act in Polish culture.

My very shy Punjabi father never taught me about the birds and bees. So shy was he that he may have thought he would get arrested for even talking about it.

I never thought that I would become a staple in the Australian cultural diet. The equivalent of bread or milk, or a fine old Tasmanian Mauve Vein. I think it's because I talk about things that people dare not mention. I don't mean raunchy things or unsavoury things. I call a spade a spade - I discuss things in a realistic manner.

There exists no politician in India daring enough to attempt to explain to the masses that cows can be eaten.

But certainly in Uganda, Mozambique and South Africa, people don't really talk about sex and certainly religious leaders - some of them - up to now have been very unwilling to accept, for instance, the promotion of condom use

Nudity seems to be an issue that America can't get over in general. I wonder when the day will come when we finally become okay with it, with the human form.

I grew up and had a lot of friends who were gay and Mormon. They couldn't come out to their parents. They couldn't even come out to me because we just wouldn't talk about it.