England and America are two countries separated by a common language.
—George Bernard Shaw
You must be in tune with the times and prepared to break with tradition.
—James Agee
There's something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world.
—A.R. Ammons
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
—H. L. Mencken
Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
—Mary Ellen Kelly
Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
—Edward Abbey
Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.
—Marcus Brigstocke
The saying "Getting there is half the fun" became obsolete with the advent of commercial airlines.
—Henry J. Tillman
A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.
—Jerry Seinfeld
Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.
—Thomas Wolfe
The culture has moved to the point where I find myself in the far left without having gone there. I still feel like I'm putting up my father's old Indiana farmer's values. I think I'm a conservative. I don't think these guys that call themselves "conservatives" really are; these guys are high rollers and plungers and bet-the-farm-on-slender-odds guys; they ain't conservatives. I think a conservative is somebody who cares about conserving the planet and the air and the water and the sky and the sun. It is something mean to say that mankind has fucked up the sunshine.
—Stephen Gaskin
Frederick William was deeply disappointed by his son, the future Frederick the Great, who in his youth seemed more interested in French culture, music, and literature than in the military virtues. The father's disaffection turned to actual hatred, and his treatment became so harsh that the young prince decided to run away, with the aid of two accomplices, Lieutenants Katte and Keith. The plan was discovered; Keith escaped, but the prince and Katte were captured and court-martialed. Katte was sentenced to life imprisonment, Frederick to solitary confinement. Frederick William, deciding that Katte's sentence was too lenient, had him beheaded in the presence of Prince Frederick. This drastic measure had the desired effect; Frederick asked the king's pardon and began to apply himself to acquiring the Prussian military philosophy.
—The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes
The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun's just started.
—John Updike
The cultured man is an artist, an artist in humanity.
—Ashley Montagu
It's pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness.
—Jerry Garcia