The Greek city-states politicised citizen and subject, creating institutions that were way ahead of anything in China or India. The politicians of antiquity exercised a political and military, if not economic, hegemony on the culture as a whole. The idea of democracy was first born and practised here.
People in the Middle East may consider the U.S. an evil hegemony that has tainted their culture, but when I look at the growth of racial and ethnic tolerance and understanding in my generation in the U.S., and see those sentiments make it around the world, it makes me feel proud.
I do see myself as the heir to a vast, great, rich culture of painting - of art in general - which we have lost, but which places obligations on us.
There's no way to escape the fact that we've grown up in a violent culture, we just can't get away from it, it's part of our heritage. I think part of it is that we've always felt somewhat helpless in the face of this vast continent. Helplessness is answered in many ways, but one of them is violence.
What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?
It may well be, of course, that America's pop culture is on balance better than our high art. I don't think so, but you can certainly make a case that the best of it aspires to a degree of aesthetic and emotional seriousness that is directly comparable to all but the very greatest works of high art.
I've always been pretty ravenous about pop culture, highbrow and lowbrow.
Eventually, my highbrow parents, who so hated the Eisenhower suburban culture of the 1950s that the only magazines they subscribed to were 'The Atlantic' and 'The New Yorker,' broke down and got 'Life' magazine.
The Office of the Solicitor General has a deeply ingrained fundamental institutional culture that has stood the test of time for decades. I went because I wanted to do public service and do an appellate practice at the very highest levels I could.
The something-for-nothing culture has been championed by a minority of militant union leaders, who threaten strikes with impunity to secure unjustifiable pay hikes.
Samsung's future hinges on new businesses, new products and new technologies. We should make our corporate culture more open, flexible and innovative.
I really love the culture of hip-hop.
I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.
When once I got to America I fell in love with hippie culture, and I've always wanted to live in the country and grow organic vegetables.
It's not my place to say how Zoe Saldana perceives herself, and I can't say how anybody else perceives her, either. I see her as a black person of Hispanic origin, but I don't even know what that really means, because I don't know anything about race and Hispanic culture.
Women have been trained in our culture and society to ask for what we want instead of taking what we want. We've been really indoctrinated with this culture of permission. I think it's true for women, and I think it's true for people of color. It's historic, and it's unfortunate and has somehow become part of our DNA. But that time has passed.
Christians historically have believed wrong on issues. Take slavery: they believed wrong on that issue for generations, and it had, just, repercussions that were staggeringly negative for our culture and my community. So it is possible to be Christian and to believe wrongly and practice wrongly.
We are living in a global world - but most schools and books still tell us only parochial histories of one particular country or culture. The truth is that there are no longer any independent countries in the world.
I hitched up to Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love, you know? And I was very much politically aligned with that whole mentality, the whole ideology of that generation, the music, the culture, the behavior.
You can't play a hobbit if you're not prepared to be a part of nerd culture.
