“The god-given is called Nature; to follow that nature is called Tao; to cultivate the Tao is called Culture.”

— Zisi 子思 481 – 402 BCE via Lin Yutang, Shan Dao
(Kong Ji or Tzu-Ssu)
Confucius' grandson and early influence on Neo-Confucianism

“Traditions and customs are set by people. Therefore what people regard as 'truth' tends to be a subjective matter.”

— Lie Yukou 列圄寇/列禦寇/列子 1
(Liè Yǔkòu, Liezi)
from Liezi "True Classic of Simplicity and Perfect Emptiness”

“Politeness is the main ingredient of culture — a kind of witchery that wins regard as surely as discourtesy gains opposition.”

— Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE via Joseph Jacobs, chapter #118
from Art of Worldly Wisdom

“Custom is the tyrant from which nothing frees us... But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow nor the last to keep”

— Blaise Pascal 1623 – 1662 CE
One of the greatest French writers of all time
from Pensées (1669)

“National hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.”

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 1749 – 1832 CE via Johann Peter Eckermann, 1830

“No blessing is equal to the blessings of work. To know and practice a craft lends greater culture than half-knowledge, a hundred times over.”

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 1749 – 1832 CE via Ungar

“All religion is antagonistic to culture... genuine morality is dependent on no religion”

— Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 – 1860 CE via R.J. Hollingdale
from Parerga and Paralipomena, "Appendices" and "Omissions"

“The life of the mind is not only a protection against boredom; it also wards of the pernicious effects of boredom; it keeps us from bad company, from the many dangers, misfortunes, losses and extravagances which the man who places his happiness entirely n the objective world is sure to encounter.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 – 1860 CE via T. Bailey Saunders
from Essays

“Culture opens the sense of beauty... A cultivated man—wise to know and bold to perform—is the end to which nature works.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882 CE
Champion of individualism
from The Conduct of Life, 1860

“Nothing is more necessary to the culture of the higher sciences, or of the more elevated departments of science, than meditation”

— Alexis de Tocqueville 1805 – 1859 CE
Pioneering researcher into the conflicts between freedom and equality

“The despotism of custom is everywhere standing up to human advancement... He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.”

— John Stuart Mill 1806 – 1873 CE

“The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.”

— Charles Darwin 1809 – 1882 CE

“Habit is habit, and not to be thrown out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.”

— Mark Twain 1835 – 1910 CE
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
America’s most famous author

“If you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line as a man of culture rare,
You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant them everywhere.”

— W. S. Gilbert 1836 – 1911 CE
Innovative, influential, inspiring dramatist

from Patience, 1881

“Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.”

— William James 1842 – 1910 CE
"Father of American psychology”

“Sublimation of instinct is an especially conspicuous feature of cultural evolution… civilization is built up on renunciation of instinctual gratifications… This ‘cultural privation’ dominates the whole field of social relations and is the cause of the antagonism against which all civilization has to fight.”

— Sigmund Freud 1856 – 1939 CE
from Civilization and its Discontents, 1930

“Great thoughts require a great mind... Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble , it must remain rare if common, it must become mean.”

— Santayana, George 1863 – 1952 CE
(Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás)
Powerfully influential, true-to-himself philosopher/poet
from The Life of Reason

“The price of culture is a Lie.”

— W. E. B. Du Bois 1868 – 1963 CE
from Souls of Black Folk

“Culture is the accumulation of highest Bliss, highest Beauty, highest Knowledge.”

— Nicholas Roerich Никола́й Константи́нович Ре́рих 1874 – 1947 CE

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes—our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.”

— G. K. Chesterton 1874 – 1936 CE

“The gnarled fidelity of an old habit.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 – 1926 CE
Profound singer of universal music

“opposites always balance on the scales – a sign of high culture. One-sidedness, though it lends momentum, is a mark of barbarism.”

— Carl Jung 1875 – 1961 CE
Insightful shamanistic scientist
from Secret of the Golden Flower 太乙金華宗旨; Tàiyǐ Jīnhuá Zōngzhǐ

2. The Wordless Teachings

“Introverts are educators and promoters of culture who show and value the interior life which is painfully wanting in our civilization.”

— Carl Jung 1875 – 1961 CE
Insightful shamanistic scientist

24. Unnecessary Baggage

“Nor is it possible to devote oneself to culture and declare that one is 'not interested' in politics.”

— Thomas Mann 1875 – 1955 CE
Deep, psychologically insightful author
from Freedom (1940)​

“Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.”

— Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962 CE
from Steppenwolf

“As the sanity of the individual lies in the continuity of his memories, so the sanity of a group lies in the continuity of its traditions; in either case, a break in the chain invites a neurotic reaction... To break sharply with the past is to court the madness that may follow the shock”

— Will (and Ariel) Durant 1885 – 1981 CE
from Lessons of History

“Culture is the one thing that we cannot deliberately aim at. It is the product of a variety of more or less harmonious activities, each pursued for its own sake.”

— T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965 CE
from Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, 1948

“Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.”

— Aldous Huxley 1894 – 1963 CE
from Brave New World

“we are being conditioned by society, by the culture we live in… there is nothing holy, or divine, or eternal about culture.”

— Krishnamurti 1895 – 1986 CE
(Jiddu Krishnamurti)

“One of the most biting satirists of Chinese culture... Lusin is God to the leftist writers of China today... [he] represents the Literature of Revolt. But this is in itself a sign of life... China needed a man like Lusin to wake the millions up from the self-complacency and lethargy and the accumulated inertia of 4000 years.”

— Lín Yǔtáng 林語堂 1895 – 1976 CE
from Wisdom of China and India

“That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”

— Erich Fromm 1900 – 1980 CE
One of the most powerful voices of his era promoting the true personal freedom beyond social, political, religious, and national belief systems
from The Sane Society

18. The Sick Society

“Culture is art elevated to a set of beliefs.”

— Thomas Wolfe 1900 – 1938 CE
(Thomas Clayton Wolfe)
Father of autobiographical fiction

“Social evolution proceeds most rapidly when different cultures come into close contact with each other and thus can exchange information and goods, even though each retains its originality.”

— René Dubos 1901 – 1982 CE
Influential scientific environmentalist

from Celebrations of life (1981)

“Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again.”

— Anais Nin 1903 – 1977 CE

26. The Still Rule the Restless

“We find a shamanic aspect in practically all the hunting cultures because they’re individual… hunters are trained in individual skills that require very special talents and abilities. When the big emphasis became settled village life, the shaman lost power… The shamans were reduce to a kind of clown society. They are magicians of a special power, but their power is now subordinate to a larger society.”

— Joseph Campbell 1904 – 1987 CE
Great translator of ancient myth into modern symbols
from Power of Myth

“Instead of only criticizing your culture, you should devote your mind and body to practicing this simple way. Then society and culture will grow out of you.”

— Shunryu Suzuki Roshi 1904 – 1971 CE

54. Planting Well

“Civilizations are grounded on myth [and] myths are so intimately bound to the culture, time, and place that unless the symbols, the metaphors, are kept alive by constant recreation through the arts, the life just slips away from them.”

— Joseph Campbell 1904 – 1987 CE
Great translator of ancient myth into modern symbols
from Power of Myth

“If it were possible adequately to present the whole of a culture, stressing every aspect exactly as appears in the culture itself, no single detail would appear bizarre or strange or arbitrary to the reader, but rather the details would all appear natural and reasonable as they do to the natives who have lived all their lives within the culture.”

— Gregory Bateson 1904 – 1980 CE
from Naven​ (1936)

“In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not DNA.”

— Gregory Bateson 1904 – 1980 CE
from Mind and nature: a necessary unity (1988)​

“To believe that I could—at 23—sacrifice history and culture for 'the Absolute' was further proof that I had not understood India. My vocation was culture, not sainthood.”

— Mircea Eliade 1907 – 1986 CE

“The amount of genuine leisure in a society is generally in inverse proportion to the amount of labor-saving machinery it employs.”

— E. F. Schumacher 1911 – 1977 CE
The “People's Economist”
from Good Work

“The agriculture here arose to produce meat and wine... an agriculture for the royalty and clergy. That is why the earth is poor and barren today. When agriculture takes a wrong turn, culture also goes away.”

— Masanobu Fukuoka 福岡 正信 1913 – 2008 CE

“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 1913 – 1960 CE

“Among the great creators, the great spokesmen of ethical ideals, none is more miraculous than Confucius himself. He claimed no divine source for his teachings nor any inspiration not open to everyone… he proclaimed no Commandments and it is easy to see him as an ancient Don Quixote. But his lifelong, unsuccessful tilting against the evils of the chaotic Chinese states of his day somehow awakened his people and eventually commanded two thousand years of Chinese culture.”

— Daniel J. Boorstin 1914 – 2004 CE
American intellectual Paul Revere
from The Creators, 1992

“one of the most precious gifts of Asia to the world, the origins of Zen are as much Taoist as Buddhist... a way and a view of life which does not belong to any of the formal categories of modern Western thought... Zen may be regarded as the fulfillment of long traditions of Indian and Chinese culture”

— Alan Watts 1915 – 1973 CE
from The Way of Zen (1957)

“when we have Eros dominated by reason instead of Eros expressing itself with reason, we create a culture this is simply against life”

— Alan Watts 1915 – 1973 CE
from Psychotherapy East and West

“Respect ethical tradition not because is is sacrosanct but because it is the only way of being in communication with others.”

— Alan Watts 1915 – 1973 CE
from Psychotherapy East and West

“The miracle of Chinese and Japanese verse is that one pure poet's voice is absolutely the same as another's and at once absolutely distinctive and different.”

— J. D. Salinger 1919 – 2010 CE
from Raise High the Roof Beams, Seymour an Introduction

“The idea of saviors has been built into the entire culture. We have learned to look to stars, leaders, experts in every field, thus surrendering our own strength, demeaning our own ability, obliterating our own selves.”

— Howard Zinn 1922 – 2010 CE
Historian of the oppressed and defeated

from A People's History of the United States​

“All culture is based on the past. For example... Islam is the reediting of Judaism and Christianity.”

— Hua-Ching Ni 1925 CE –
from Complete Works of Lao Tzu

“Culture is simply how one lives and is connected to history by habit.”

— Malcolm X الحاجّ مالك الشباز‎‎ 1925 – 1965 CE via Leroi Jones, 1966

“Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.”

— Allen Ginsberg 1926 – 1997 CE

13. Honor and Disgrace

“The quality of a society and of its culture will depend on the status of its unemployed.”

— Ivan Illich 1926 – 2002 CE
"an archaeologist of ideas"
from The Right to Useful Unemployment and Its Professional Enemies

“Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.”

— César Chavez César Estrada Chávez 1927 – 1993 CE
(César Estrada Chávez)

“Care for what seems unimportant… Having replaced instinct with language, society, and culture, we are the only species that depends on teaching and learning. We aren’t human without them… But are they the occupations of the rich and mighty?”

— Ursula Le Guin 1929 – 2018 CE

27. No Trace

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility.”

— Neil Postman 1931 – 2003 CE
from Amusing Ourselves to Death

60. Less is More

“Man not only creates culture, inhabits it, he carries it around within him—man is culture... Tell me how you dress, how you act, what are your habits, which gods you honor—and I will tell you who you are.”

— Ryszard Kapuściński 1932 – 2007 CE
“One of the most credible journalists the world has ever seen"
from Travels with Herodotus (2004)

“Culture has no boundaries. Anyone can be a participant in a culture—anywhere and at any time... a society without cuture would be too drab and lifeless to be endured.”

— James P. Carse 1932 – 2020 CE
Thought-proving, influential, deep thinker
from Finite and Infinite Games

“When we write down our thoughts, they become solid which makes them less creative but more secure as a foundation for thinking further and deeper. The same principle may apply to culture and civilization—the philosophies and wisdom of the past makes a strong foundation but also a ‘golden chain’ that prevents creativity and evolution. Like a tall building with a firm and strong base but an open and ever-changing top.”

— Shan Dao 山道 1933 CE –

“American culture is going down the drain… an enormous degeneration… a culture that has no spiritual center, a culture that has money and education, but no sense of being at peace with the world, no sense of purpose in life.”

— Woody Allen 1935 CE –

“It is the time where we partner with Creation in the creation of ourselves, in the restoration of the biosphere, the regenesis of society and in the assuming of a new type of culture; the culture of Kindness.”

— Jean Houston 1937 CE –

“It is necessary that the student take great pride in his country, in his culture... However, he should not, from the vantage point of this pride, look down on other countries as barbaric. The cultures and traditions of other countries should be seen as adornments of the culture and traditions of his own country and he should study them wholeheartedly.”

— Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE
from Political Treatise (1972)

“Not only is vision, as an intuitive, purpose insight, the basis of culture, but it is also the only real agent involved in the continuing process of cultural transformation.”

— José Argüelles 1939 – 2011 CE
from Shambhala Review (1976)

“It wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambitions to stir things up. i just thought of popular culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk on it.”

— Bob Dylan 1941 CE –
from Chronicles

“This recipe for long life has been repeated in every civilized culture, and yet it has forever fallen on deaf ears.”

— Red Pine 1943 CE –
( Bill Porter)
Exceptional translator, cultural diplomat

9. Know When to Stop

“Sexuality and eroticism are the intricate intersection of nature and culture. Feminists grossly oversimplify the problem of sex when they reduce it a matter of social convention: readjust society, eliminate sexual inequality, purify sex roles, and happiness and harmony will reign. Here feminism, like all liberal movements of the past two hundred years, is heir to Rousseau.”

— Camille Paglia 1947 CE –
Fearless and insightful status quo critic

“People adhere to ideas that explain and offer psychological compensation for their position in the class system of their time… People thus very often act against their own interests… It happens in all class systems, all cultures in recorded history, since the first agrarian and urban civilizations.”

— Kim Stanley Robinson 1952 CE –

“civilizations, cultures are organisms seeded (seeds = teachings) from another unseen world and planted”

— Peter Kingsley 1953 CE –
from A Story Waiting to Pierce You

“until mindfulness becomes more explicit in stressing an ethical vision, it will serve to sustain our culture of self-interest, or at least fail to mount any serious challenge to it.”

— Roman Krznaric 1
Practical, popular, modern philosopher

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

“For more than 2,000 years there has been a long war against pleasure... Carpe diem hedonism was far more than the pursuit of sensory pleasures: it was a subversive political act with the power to reshape the cultural landscape.”

— Roman Krznaric 1
Practical, popular, modern philosopher

from Carpe Diem Regained

“The pursuit of erotic pleasure has been a powerful force for social equality and cultural transformation [and]—perhaps surprisingly— the place to begin exploring this neglected virtue of sexual hedonism is... in the apparently prim and proper Victorian era... We love to depict the Victorians as prudish moralists who would blanche at the mention of sexual pleasure... but it is far from the truth.”

— Roman Krznaric 1
Practical, popular, modern philosopher

from Carpe Diem Regained (2017)

“True wisdom is free of the dramas of culture or religion and should bring us only a sense of peace and happiness.”

— Dzogchen Pönlop 1965 CE –

“In the real world, equal respect for all cultures doesn't translate into a rich mosaic of colorful and proud peoples interacting peacefully while maintaining a delightful diversity of food and craftwork. It translates into closed pockets of oppression, ignorance, and abuse.”

— Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1969 CE –
Powerful voice for Islamic reform
from From Islam to America

“Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture’s intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women’s rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity.”

— Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1969 CE –
Powerful voice for Islamic reform
from Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now

“We've succeeded as a species because of our ability to form cultures—groups of people who come together around a common set of values and beliefs.”

— Simon Sinek 1973 CE –
from Start With Why

— Yuval Harari יובל נח הררי‎ 1976 CE –
Israeli historian, professor, and philosopher

from Sapiens

“The transition from many small cultures to a few large cultures and finally to a single global society was probably an inevitable result of the dynamics of human history.”

— Yuval Harari יובל נח הררי‎ 1976 CE –
Israeli historian, professor, and philosopher

from Sapiens