“An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift.”

The assumption that men were created equal, with an equal ability to make an effort and win an earthly reward, although denied every day by experience, is maintained every day by our folklore and our daydreams.

No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.

A woman, even a brilliant woman, must have two qualities in order to fulfill her promise: more energy than mere mortals, and the ability to outwit her culture.

And when our baby stirs and struggles to be born it compels humility: what we began is now its own.

Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression. Man shares the capacity for love and hate, anger and fear, loyalty and grief, with other living creatures. But humour, which has an intellectual as well as an emotional element belongs to man

Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump: you have to get it right the first time.

Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.

There is no hierarchy of values by which one culture has the right to insist on all its own values and deny those of another.

The anonymity of the city is one of its strengths as well as – carried too far – one of its weaknesses.

Pigs and cows and chickens and people are all competing for grain.

Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.

There is no greater power in the world than the zest of a postmenopausal woman.

I think rigid heterosexuality is a perversion of nature.

What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.

Jealousy is not a barometer by which the depth of love can be read. It merely records the degree of the lover’s insecurity.

‎ When a person is born we rejoice, and when they’re married we jubilate, but when they die we try to pretend nothing has happened.

Although the Nasser revolution of 1952 was secular, the culture remained deeply religious – but it was a faith of moderation and tolerance.

Now I’ve come to such a mixed culture: America, Europe, South America, Africa. And the politics are changing everywhere all the time and becoming even more unpredictable.

[Shanghai Biennale] has been my attitude for as long as I’ve been practicing art and other cultural-related activities.

I don’t personally feel any association with a kind of culture related to state, or culture related to power, which I think is always disgusting.

[Cultural department] understand nothing but bureaucratic daily affairs. They don’t care about culture.

Jazz does not belong to one race or culture, but is a gift that America has given the world.

A struggle that centers on Palestinian land, history, civilization, culture and identity As for your judicial apparatus, which is where this court comes from.

The Kurds know that they won’t achieve their own state by force of arms but through international recognition. And they have certainly heard what the German foreign minister said in connection with the arms deliveries.