180 Culture Quotes About Its Power In Society
The conversation around diversity continues to grow in society, and these culture quotes show why it’s so beneficial in the world.
One of the amazing things about America is the diverse culture that the country has from being created as the melting pot.
While the diversity in culture has caused some uncomfortable and challenging situations throughout the country’s past, it’s also one of the things that can make us strong.
Why Is It Important To Embrace Our Cultural Differences?
By learning to embrace our cultural differences we make our society even stronger.
The following culture quotes will help you learn to appreciate the benefits of cultural diversity in society.
If you like this article, we suggest you explore our most popular quotes article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily encouragement.
Look through our complete collection of inspirational quotes here.
Culture Quotes About Our Ways Of Life
1. “Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.” – Thomas Wolfe
2. “Cultures grow on the vine of tradition.” – Jonah Goldberg
3. “The beauty of the world lies in the diversity of its people.” – Unknown
4. “Culture is a way of coping with the world by defining it in detail.” – Malcolm Bradbury
5. “Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.” – Jawaharlal Nehru
6. “Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear.” – Walter Lippman
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7. “The role of culture is that it’s the form through which we as a society reflect on who we are, where we’ve been, where we hope to be.” – Wendell Pierce
8. “We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which we were given to us by our society.” – Alan Watts
9. “We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.” – Kofi Annan
10. “Human cultural diversity is vast; the range of cultural practices, beliefs, and languages that we speak is vast.” – Mark Pagel
11. “We are, at almost every point of our day, immersed in cultural diversity: faces, clothes, smells, attitudes, values, traditions, behaviors, beliefs, rituals.” – Randa Abdel-Fattah
Culture Quotes On The Beauty Of Diversity
12. “Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbor is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.” – Paulo Coelho
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13. “Given New York City’s cultural diversity, it has always attracted creative people.” – Fred Wilson
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14. “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
15. “Every man’s ability may be strengthened or increased by culture.” – John Abbot
16. “Every one of us is a perfect human being, deformed by the family, the society and the culture.” — Alejandro Jodorowsky
17. “Cultural differences should not separate us from each other, but rather cultural diversity brings a collective strength that can benefit all of humanity.” – Robert Alan
18. “New Orleans is unlike any city in America. Its cultural diversity is woven into the food, the music, the architecture – even the local superstitions. It’s a sensory experience on all levels and there’s a story lurking around every corner.” – Ruta Sepetys
19. “Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.” – Stephen Covey
20. “Our cultural diversity has most certainly shaped our national character.” – Julie Bishop
Culture Quotes On Embracing Ourselves
21. “One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.” – Shannon Alder
22. “We are increasingly recognizing and accepting, respecting and celebrating, our cultural diversity.” – Julie Bishop
23. “We need to help students and parents cherish and preserve the ethnic and cultural diversity that nourishes and strengthens this community – and this nation.” – Cesar Chavez
24. “No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.” – Mahatma Gandhi
25. “Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace: respect for diversity.” – John Hume
26. “Keep your language. Love its sounds, its modulations, its rhythm. But try to march together with men of different languages, remote from your own, who wish like you for a more just and human world.” – Hélder Câmara
27. “If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.” – John F. Kennedy
28. “Never judge someone by the way he looks or a book by the way it’s covered; for inside those tattered pages, there’s a lot to be discovered.” – Stephen Cosgrove
29. “Living through the intersections of cultural diversity has given me an intimate understanding of the dynamics of living between the dimensions of East and West, traditional and modern, and political and spiritual. – Deeyah Khan
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30. “Real cultural diversity results from the interchange of ideas, products, and influences, not from the insular development of a single national style.” – Tyler Cowen
31. “Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.”― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Culture Quotes On The Importance Of Protecting It
32. “Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.” – Albert Camus
33. “Preservation of one’s own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.” – Cesar Chavez
34. “Culture’s worth huge, huge risks. Without culture, we’re all totalitarian beasts.” – Norman Mailer
35. “Diversity is about all of us, and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together.” – Jacqueline Woodson
36. “Culture makes all men gentle.” – Menander
37. “It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.” – Maya Angelou
38. “If we are to preserve culture we must continue to create it.” – Johan Huizinga
39. “When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don’t just turn it off one day.” – Chinua Achebe
40. “Our culture is more shaped by the arts and humanities than it often is by politics.” – Jim Leach
41. “A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Culture Quotes To Enlighten You
42. “When you learn something from people, or from a culture, you accept it as a gift, and it is your lifelong commitment to preserve it and build on it.” – Yo-Yo Ma
43. “We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.” — Jimmy Carter
44. “Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.” – Mahatma Gandhi
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45. “Every culture has something to be ashamed of, but every culture also has the right to change, to challenge negative traditions, and to create new ones.” – Ralph Nader
46. “Endless data show that diverse teams make better decisions. We are building products that people with very diverse backgrounds use, and I think we all want our company makeup to reflect the makeup of the people who use our products. That’s not true of any industry really, and we have a long way to go.” — Sheryl Sandberg
47. “Everybody blames the culture without taking responsibility.” – James Levine
48. “To merely observe your culture without contributing to it seems very close to existing as a ghost.” – Chuck Palahniuk
49. “The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.” – John F. Kennedy
50. “Diversity and inclusion, which are the real grounds for creativity, must remain at the center of what we do.” – Marco Bizzarri
Culture Quotes About Our Traditions
51. “What a culture we live in, we are swimming in an ocean of information, and drowning in ignorance.” – Richard Paul Evans
52. “The soul takes nothing with her to the next world but her education and her culture. At the beginning of the journey to the next world, one’s education and culture can either provide the greatest assistance or else act as the greatest burden, to the person who has just died.” – Plato
53. “The truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.” – Gabriel Zaid
54. No human culture is inaccessible to someone who makes the effort to understand, to learn, to inhabit another world.” – Henry Louis Gates Jr.
55. “The imagination is the goal of history. I see culture as an effort to literally realize our collective dreams.” – Terence McKenna
56. “Our culture places a very high premium on self-expression, but is relatively disinterested in producing selves that are worth expressing.” – Matthew Kelly
57. “Culture consists of connections, not of separations: to specialize is to isolate.” – Carlos Fuentes
58. “This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer.” – Leo Tolstoy
59. “Don’t let the culture influence your message, let your message influence the culture.” – Mike Huckabee
60. “Culture was actually humanity’s attempt to extend the womb.” – Christopher Dawson
More Culture Quotes And Sayings
61. “Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of
differences.”- Mikhail Gorbachev
62. “The triumph of culture is to overpower nationality.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
63. “The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.” – Ruth Benedict
64. No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.” – James Baldwin
65. “Culture is not made up but something that evolves which is human.” – Edward T. Hall
66. It’s part of our pop culture to give animals human personalities and talents.” – Neil Degrasse Tyson
67. “Culture is the bedrock, the final wall, against which one leans one’s back in a godforsaken chaos.” – J.C. Powys
68. “That is true culture which helps us to work for the social betterment of all.” – Henry Ward Beecher
69. A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” – Marcus Garvey
70. If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.” – Eckhart Tolle
Culture Quotes About Music, Food, Fashion, And Other Things
71. “A mind cannot be independent of culture.” — Lev Vygotsky
72. “Fashion is part of our culture, and it’s about more than just a pretty dress.” — Joan Smalls
73. “What colonialism does is cause an identity crisis about one’s own culture.” — Lupita Nyong’o
74. “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” — Ray Bradbury
75. “Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.” — Thomas Carlyle
76. “Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.” — Elie Wiesel
77. “I think music in itself is healing. It’s an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from, everyone loves music.” — Billy Joel
78. “Though music transcends language, culture and time, and though notes are the same, Indian music is unique because it is evolved, sophisticated and melodies are defined.” — Dayananda Saraswati
79. “Cooking is all about people. Food is maybe the only universal thing that really has the power to bring everyone together. No matter what culture, everywhere around the world, people get together to eat.” — Guy Fieri
80. “The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It’s part of our culture like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays beyond their meaning, a factor in our economy.” — Bob Schieffer
Short Culture Quotes
81. “Food is a lens for culture.” — Dana Goodyear
82. “The future of architecture is culture.” — Philip Johnson
83. “In human life, economics precedes politics or culture.” — Park Geun-hye
84. “I think dance in any culture, in any form, is a true leveler.” — Baz Luhrmann
85. “In order to be universal, you have to be rooted in your own culture.” — Abbas Kiarostami
86. “I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.” — Wole Soyinka
87. “Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world.” — Matthew Arnold
88. “Our culture is obsessed with real events because we experience hardly any.” — David Shields
89. “Mythology is a subjective truth. Every culture imagines life a certain way.” — Devdutt Pattanaik
90. “Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.” — Milan Kundera
Culture Quotes On What It’s Made Of
91. “Any good teacher knows how important it is to connect with students and understand our culture.” -Adora Svitak
92. “Music is critical in our lives and culture. It’s the inspiration that drives us. It’s also the window to our souls. It’s a reflection as to who we are, what we stand for and where we’re going.” -Bill Walton
93. “The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period.” -Oriana Fallaci
94. “Food is culture. Food is an identity, a footprint of who you are.” -Lidia Bastianich
95. “Popular culture is a contradiction in terms. If it’s popular, it’s not culture.” -Vivienne Westwood
96. “Popular culture is a contradiction in terms. If it’s popular, it’s not culture.” -America Ferrera
97. “Mexico and the U.S. are bound not only because of the common border, but by a shared culture and history.” -Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
98. “Culture is a thousand things, a thousand times. It’s living the core values when you hire; when you write an email; when you are working on a project; when you are walking in the hall.” -Brian Chesky
99. “We have a culture where we are incredibly self critical, we don’t get comfortable with our success.” – Mark Parker
100. “Being Indian is not blood as much as it is culture.” -Tony Hillerman
Culture Quotes For Celebrating Your Norms
101. “The greatness of a culture can be found in its festivals.” — Siddharth Katragadda
102. “A culture disconnected from wild nature becomes insane.” — Toby Hemenway
103. “Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past.” — Barbara Kingsolver
104. “Cultures are virtual realities made of language.” — Terence McKenna
105. “The effectiveness of a new culture depends on the strength of the people behind the change and the strength of the pre-existing culture.” — Steve Gruenert
106. “Culture opens the sense of beauty.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
107. “Culture means control over nature.” — Johan Huizinga
108. “In an immature society culture is an import; for a mature one it is a native manufacture which eventually becomes an export.” — Northrop Frye
109. “Everything is arranged so that it be this way, this is what is called culture.” — Jacques Derrida
110. “I just think that some version of the past in our culture is going to rise up and become dominant.” — Peter Davison
Culture Quotes To Make You Understand Different Lifestyles
111. “Culture is what defines us as a community, as a people, and if we’re not careful, as individuals. Culture plays an important role in life.” — Adam Butler
112. “I love to hike and travel and see different cultures. I like to get out, walk around, talk to people, watch them do life, and practice all of their customs.” — Bob Roberts
113. “Only when we experience different cultures do we realize the immense differences between various cultures and ours.” — Tabor Laughlin
114. “Culture makes us unique and special. They should also inherit this, but this can happen only if we preserve it.” — Nico van Oudenhoven
115. “Because culture makes me the person that I am, I value my culture and there is so much that I feel but cannot explain.” — Dolores Delgado Bernal
116. “Contact with another culture can lead to reflection on one’s own culture, which then seems less a matter of course.” — Bob Elsen
117. “Personal culture makes us unique, not one’s enemy; One can’t compare their beauty to another’s deformity.” — Steven A. Funes
118. “We are all cultural beings able to navigate successfully in our culture, learning about the meaning of the different social groups within it.” — Perry R. Hinton
119. “Much of what individuals assume to be individual “choice” is instead culturally constructed and automatic.” — Elsie Jones-Smith
120. “I have an awareness of the world around me. I explore and learn about different cultures.” — Derek G. Waller
Culture Quotes About People’s Norm
121. “Hiring people is an art, not a science, and resumes can’t tell you whether someone will fit into a company’s culture.” — Howard Schultz
122. “Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.” — Hermann Hesse
123. “We’re warriors, this culture, and we’re very puritanical about sex and very embracing about violence and I don’t know why that is.” — Mark Ruffalo
124. “ It is out of culture that the substance of real revolutions is made.”Walter Lippmann
125. “A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don’t get paid.” — Lawrence Lessig
126. “But the idea that women can’t take care of themselves still permeates our culture.” — Katherine Dunn
127. “What makes cookbooks interesting is to find out about the people and the culture that invented the food.” — Vincent Schiavelli
128. “Yeah, I don’t deal with current events or pop culture, and I avoid politics like the plague.” — Max Cannon
129. “The things that I draw on, and the world that I feel part of, aren’t particularly youth culture.” — Robert Wyatt
130. “I think it talks about that there needs to be some proactive attack against drugs infiltrating our culture.” — Joe Morton
Culture Quotes To Help You Celebrate Our Diversity
131. “Humans can’t exist without a culture—without culture life would be meaningless.” ― Joni S. Sancken
132. “Whatever you say about popular culture, people like people who know things, who are experts, and it doesn’t particularly matter what they look like.” ― Mary Beard
133. “Jazz is not popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.” ― John Corigliano
134. “Do not let your assumptions about a culture block your ability to perceive the individual, or you will fail.” ― Brandon Sanderson
135. “In this huge old occidental culture our teaching elders are books. Books are our grandparents!” ― Gary Snyder
136. “Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change.” ― John Podhoretz
137. “If we hope to move beyond the superficialities of our culture, we must be willing to go down into the recreating silences.” ― Richard Foster
138. “Tolerance, inter-cultural dialogue and respect for diversity are more essential than ever in a world where peoples are becoming more and more closely interconnected.” — Kofi Annan
139. “I’ve learned that, at certain points, even if we’re of such different cultures, we can think alike, and understand each other easier than we may expect.” ― Tamuna Tsertsvadze
140. “If you want to change the culture, you will have to start by changing the organization.” ― Mary Douglas
Culture Quotes To Cultivate Understanding
141. “Culture is a way of life for an entire society, whereas creativity is a way of life for the creative individual.” ― Edith Schaeffer
142. “Culture is like a breathed atmosphere in which we live, breathe, and have our being.” ― Edwin Hubbel Chapin
143. “Culture is the arts enhanced by great literature and historic continuity, together with reverence for law and the learning of the great minds of the past.” ― Harold J. Laski
144. “Culture is the sum of all the forms of art, of love, and of thought, which, in the course of centuries, have enabled man to be less enslaved.” ― Andre Malraux
145. Culture is the foundation of our society and the expression of our heritage.” ― Madeleine Albright
146. “Culture is the set of transmitted and learned behavior patterns, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought that characterize the functioning of particular population.” ― Clifford Geertz
147. “Culture is the context in which we live our lives.” ― Shashi Tharoor
148. “Culture is like a river, always changing, always flowing, and always influencing those who live near it.” ― Rick Warren
149. “Culture is the hallmark of a civilized society.” ― George S. Patton
150. “Culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people’s convenience.” ― Chuck Palahniuk
Unveiling The Essence Of Humanity Through Culture Quotes
151. “I was a kid who liked art and theater and dance and music, but if you lived in Harlem, high culture was somewhere else, and it wasn’t black.” ― Samuel R. Delany
152. “There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture.” ― Charles A. Reich
153. “The Hollywood culture is so invasive, and I definitely wanted to be near it eventually.” ― Carmen Ejogo
154. “It’s strange to think that culture is simply a matter of millions of files flying around, but we now think in terms of networks for everything.” ― DJ Spooky
155. “Avatar is a total nerd thing, and yet our popular culture has somehow made all that stuff acceptable.” ― Daniel Clowes
156. “The days are gone when a country can issue orders to other peoples. Today, mankind needs culture, ideas and logic.” ― Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
157. “All cultures are capable of democracy and liberalism. Everybody wants to be free.” ― Lawrence Kaplan
158. “I think every culture is passionate about food; some are just passionate about food and the food is shitty.” ― Jonathan Gold
159. “I always think the novelist should go to the culture’s dark places and poke around. Pose a lot of hard questions.” ― Dana Spiotta
160. “I think there’s a lot to be learned from pop culture. But at the same time I see the dangers of using it in an exclusive way to construct meaning in your life.” ― Dana Spiotta
Culture Quotes That Celebrate The Richness Of Our World’s Heritage
161. “The best definition of the word culture (workplaces included) that I’ve heard is that it’s how people behave when nobody is watching.” ― Gwyn Morgan
162. “Integrity, probity, ethics and transparency is needed but most important is the culture of discipline.” ― Vinod Rai
163. “Culture is a simplification and a lie. It’s the currency by which fools navigate the world. Smart people get beyond it.” ― Terence McKenna
164. “The fastest way to change the feedback culture in an organization is for the leaders to become better receivers.” ― Sheila Heen
165. “Culture is that which falsifies.” ― Kathy Acker
166. “Art and culture are nonetheless vital, essential even, to what it means to be human, yet digital abundance has diminished our sense of their worth.” ― Astra Taylor
167. “You cannot merely expect culture to be a natural occurrence; it has to be taught and made a part of your everyday routine.” ― Mike Krzyzewski
168. “Without myth, however, every culture loses its healthy creative natural power: it is only a horizon encompassed with myth that rounds off to unity a social movement.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
169. “Human rights are universally valid and indivisible, regardless of culture and religion.” ― Alice Schwarzer
170. “I’m not a trained dancer, but I grew up in a culture that revolves around dance.” ― Shakira
Workplace And Company Culture Quotes
171. “Culture is not an initiative. Culture is the enabler of all initiatives.” — Larry Senn
172. “We believe that it’s really important to come up with core values that you can commit to. And by commit, we mean that you’re willing to hire and fire based on them. If you’re willing to do that, then you’re well on your way to building a company culture that is in line with the brand you want to build.” — Tony Hsieh
173. “Culture is about performance and making people feel good about how they contribute to the whole.” — Tracy Streckenbach
174. “Corporate culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage that is completely within the control of the entrepreneur.” — David Cummings
175. “Culture is to recruiting as product is to marketing.” — HubSpot’s Culture Code
176. “Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” ― Vince Lombardi
177. “Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with a passion.” — Brian Chesky
178. “A strong team can take any crazy vision and turn it into reality.” ― John Carmack
179. “Being a great place to work is the difference between being a good company and a great company.” — Brian Kristofek
180. “Culture is the foundation upon which all success is built.” ― Tony Hsieh
Learn To Embrace Culture
After reading the culture quotes above, what can you do to embrace culture in your life and community?
Look for ways to learn about and appreciate the diverse cultures that are around you.
Instead of being fearful of things that are different from you begin to look for the things that you can learn from it.
When we are able to take this approach to culture, it will change everything in our society.
This is why it’s important to protect your own culture while also respecting that of others.
In the end, if we can learn to appreciate each other and our differences, we will be better together.
What’s your biggest takeaway from these culture quotes and sayings?
Do you have any other insightful quotes to add?
Let us know in the comment section below.
