A Quote by Azar Nafisi

Every culture has something to be ashamed of, but every culture also has the right to change, to challenge negative traditions, and create to new ones. — © Azar Nafisi
Every culture has something to be ashamed of, but every culture also has the right to change, to challenge negative traditions, and create to new ones.
...culture is useless unless it is constantly challenged by counter culture. People create culture; culture creates people. It is a two-way street. When people hide behind a culture, you know that's a dead culture.
We need to define what culture is. Every human being lives within a culture, and culture means "To grow in." It means to literally fall, and this is exactly what I believe is happening all around us right now.
"Culture" is a new phenomenon, I believe. Culture is the new religion. People treat you based upon your culture. You are pushed to describe yourself by your culture: Kurdish or Turkish? Left wing or right wing? Progressive or conservative? Westerner or Easterner? European or Asian? So we have a label ready for you.
I am not ashamed to say that our culture is far better than the Islamic culture, which is a culture of barbarism.
At least three further requirements supplement the strategies of environmentalists if we were to create and preserve a less violent world. 1) Every culture must begin to affirm the female future. 2) Species responsibility must be returned to women in every culture. 3) The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately ten percent of the human race.
You can’t mandate [cultural change], can’t engineer it. What you can do is create the conditions for transformation. You can provide incentives. You can define the marketplace realities and goals. But then you have to trust. In fact, in the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.
I used to believe that you could change the culture or behavior of a company. I still believe it's possible, but it is at least a five to ten year process, if you are successful at all. More recently, I have been attracted to the ideas of the behavioralist, Edgar Schein. Schein has argued that you cannot change the culture of a company, but you can use the culture of a company to create change. It's an interesting approach to overcoming resistance. And if you can change how a company does its work, you might eventually be able to change how its people think.
Companies don't have one culture. They have as many as they have supervisors or managers. You want to build a strong culture? Hold every manager accountable for the culture that he or she builds.
It seemed [there are] musical nodes on the planet where cultures meet and mix, sometimes as a result of unfortunate circumstances, like slavery or something else, in places like New Orleans and Havana and Brazil. And those are places where the European culture and indigenous culture and African culture all met and lived together, and some new kind of culture and especially music came out of that.
America is an open society, more open than any other in the world. People of every race, of every color, of every culture are welcomed here to create a new life for themselves and their families. And what do these people who enter into the American mainstream have in common? English, our shared common language.
Terence McKenna says, "The culture is not your friend." I am not sure we can change this culture. But I think we can rise above it and create a new world. That's why I so deeply believe in alternative spaces. That's why I believe in the power of art and activism.
Picking on another person in their mind justifies and makes their stature higher. People do it interracially. It's amazing how every race, every culture seems to have a culture they pick on.
I feel like every artist has an opportunity to create something new and to challenge themselves to reach out to a new crowd.
Many teachers of the Sixties generation said "We will steal your children", and they did. A significant part of America has converted to the ideas of the 1960s - hedonism, self-indulgence and consumerism. For half of all Americans today, the Woodstock culture of the Sixties is the culture they grew up with - their traditional culture. For them, Judeo-Christian culture is outside the mainstream now. The counter-culture has become the dominant culture, and the former culture a dissident culture - something that is far out, and 'extreme'.
Every new book is a challenge. I could, of course, have stopped many years ago if it was only for money. But no, it is about building bridges among cultures, different cultures... When you want someone to understand something that is not forcefully in your culture, you use stories.
Clearly, in every civilized culture since recorded history, marriage is always between a man and a woman. And the fact that we're trying to change it is very serious, because the family is the foundational institution in our culture.
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