A Quote by Linda Colley

Much of how Americans have always understood their history, culture, and identity depends on positioning Europe as the 'other,' as that 'old world' against which they define themselves.

Linda Colley

Quote Topics

Against Always Culture Define Depends Europe History How Identity Much Old Old World Other Positioning Themselves Understood Which World

Quote Author

Linda Colley
British - Historian
Born: September 13, 1949

The new culture war is about national identity rather than religion and 'transcendent authority.' It focuses on which groups the United States will formally admit to residence and citizenship. It asks the same question as the old culture war: 'Who are we?' But the earlier query was primarily about how we define ourselves morally. The new question is about how we define ourselves ethnically, racially and linguistically. It is, in truth, one of the oldest questions in our history, going back to our earliest immigration battles of the 1840s and 1850s.

E. J. Dionne

The U.S. has always understood itself to be united around political principles and not around culture, whereas the nations of Europe have a much more traditional conception of nationhood that is connected to romanticism, which thinks of religion and culture as ingredients of nationhood.

Martha Nussbaum

How many slams in an old screen door? Depends how loud you shut it. How many slices in a bread? Depends how thin you cut it. How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live 'em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give 'em.” ? How Many, How Much by Shel Silverstein “Tell the truth, or someone will tell it for you.

Stephanie Klein

Shel Silverstein

The span of a man is three score and 10, or thereabouts. As most Americans are not especially keen on availing themselves of the lessons contained in 6,000 years of recorded history, we have a tendency to believe that the current status quo is pretty much how the world has been and how it will always be.

Theodore Beale

I've always been intrigued by questions of perception and identity-building, specifically how teens and young adults define themselves within their communities.

Keith Maitland

Our instructors do not understand how it is. To be bound to someone in such a way. They are too old, too out of touch with their emotions. They no longer remember what it is to live and breathe within the world. They think it simple to pit any two people against each other. It is never simple. The other person becomes how you define your life, how you define yourself. They become as necessary as breathing. Then they expect the victor to continue on without that. It would be like pulling the Murray twins apart and expecting them to be the same. They would be whole but not complete.

Erin Morgenstern

As part of the E.U., my children can have the freedom and the opportunity to work and live across Europe; to be ambitious in the world's largest market; and to access so much of the history, the culture and the opportunity which is our common European heritage.

Andrew Lansley

Positioning one leader against another is not necessarily how our democracy functions. We do not directly elect the president or the prime minister. We choose parties based on their policies, and their efficacy depends on how well they implement their policies.

Pinarayi Vijayan

History is of all subjects the one which is most engaged with people's perceptions of themselves, identity, politics, all those things which shape the modern world.

Kwasi Kwarteng

The bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie have armed themselves against the rising proletariat with, among other things, culture. It's an old ploy of the bourgeoisie. They keep a standing art to defend their collapsing culture.

George Grosz

Especially for blacks, but also for many Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asian-Americans, group identity is now shaped more by a liberal politics in which past victimization is deferred to, and for which redress is sought with preferential treatment, than by a unified culture.

Shelby Steele

Both art and the artist lack identity and define themselves only through their encounter with each other.

Harold Rosenberg

And the associated danger for the identity of Europe cannot be ignored out of a wrongly understood sense of respect... The Catholic side sees this clearly and says as much.

Georg Ganswein

We have long depended on an America which has got a clear sense of its stakes in the world and how much it depends on the world as well as how much the world and its allies and friends depend on the United States of America, and we hope this will continue.