Top 1200 American Pop Culture Quotes & Sayings - Page 16

There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is

The whole point of American culture is to pick up any old piece of trash and make it shine with more facets than the Hope Diamond.

When I graduated, everyone was like, 'You got to do pop and R&B to make it,' like very contemporary pop and R&B. I tried for a little while, but I just realized my voice wasn't quite fitting some of the records that I was doing.

I'm not at the hoarder stage, but there are two or three storage units here and there. I have things that a lot of people put a lot of heart and soul into, a lot of mental energy. I'm good at keeping those things. When it comes to pop culture, as you move through this fast lane, you wonder where it all goes and how you can hold onto it.

Today's Democrat Party believes that distinct American culture is corrupt, biased, racist, sexist, prejudicial, homophobic. There is nothing about it they want to preserve.

I enjoy films like 'American Beauty' and want to do similar films that reflect our culture.

I hate recording all the shows for the week in one day, because I want to be able to mention current events and pop culture. If Madonna punches Britney in the face today, I want to reference that on 'Wine Library TV' tomorrow. Monday's episode is always the best, because it's hot off the press.

A lot of comic conventions go way beyond comic books and include other parts of pop culture, like celebrities and science fiction and movies and books. So I go to them either as a celebrity, or as a fan, because I'm a big sci-fi geek.

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.

Anthropology studies different cultures; mainly primitive, but it doesn't think its own culture is primitive, unfortunately. There is no field that you can study today that isn't trapped in the culture in some way. It's hard to escape your culture.

Latin American culture is conservative, and the rural areas are tremendously conservative. I don't believe that's just a Chilean thing.

Because of my New Line upbringing, half my heart goes to scrappy independents, and half goes to mainstream, down-the-middle pop culture events. And even with those, to try to keep something fresh and original with them and try to do things that the majors miss.

My wife is very interested in fashion. I am absolutely not. I couldn't give a toss. Fashion is a perfectly valid thing to be interested in. I'm just not particularly interested in pop culture. I think I am more interested in things that have a settled permanence about them.

I'm not a feminist. I hail men, I love men. I celebrate American male culture, and beer, and bars and muscle cars.

Pop stars are pop stars. People, especially the youngsters, are crazy for them.

It's very funny, American society: White culture can do all sorts of things and get away with it, but the minute a black person does it, it's interpreted in some way.

There's so many different kinds of songs that could be pop songs. I don't think pop songs should sound the same.

The representation that I always go back to is a pop star - whether it's Lady Gaga or Madonna, I love the way those women in pop music have always made an effort to create a specific vision.

I liked the idea of creating a new pop-culture, folkloric hero character that I created with 'Django' that I think's gonna last for a long time. And I think as the generations go on and everything, you know, my hope is it can be a rite of passage for black fathers and their sons. Like, when are they old enough to watch 'Django Unchained'?

When an artist becomes pop, it's because the people choose it. Yes, you can have that dream to be a big pop star, but it's the audience that puts you in that position. I never had a paid marketing campaign, it was never like that.

Tim Thornton's portrait of a pop culture obsession is so convincing that one can't help wishing that his fictional alt rock band actually existed, or suspecting that they did. The Alternative Hero is a weirdly compelling portrait of fanatic fandom which reads like High Fidelity at high volume.

I was never attracted to the pop world. I listen to music that is pop sometimes. But I've never thought, 'Oh, I need to work with Ne-Yo now.' It's never really been my thing.

I don't want an entire world full of people just drinking Coca-Cola and eating McDonald's hamburgers and listening to American pop records. That would be a lesser world. I hope the cultural diversity is rich and is able to survive the Westernization of their economies.

The impact of black music and black art forms on American culture is really difficult to appreciate.

The danger of our culture.- We belong to a period of which the culture is in danger of being destroyed by the appliances of culture.

Saving Italy is an astonishing account of a little known American effort to save Italy’s vast store of priceless monuments and art during World War II. While American warriors were fighting the length of the country, other Americans were courageously working alongside to preserve the irreplaceable best of Italy’s culture. Read it and be proud of those who were on their own front lines of a cruel war.

There must be a rule of thumb in pop-culture archaeology that states that the allure of any topic is inversely related to its assigned importance in the affairs of humanity. The more trivial the subject, the dearer it is to most of its partisans and the more worthy of scholarship. The smallest things in life often mean the most to people.

American culture is very good at interpersonal relationships and people skills, whereas we're incredibly adept at academics and straightforward 19th-century Victorian education.

With a far-future setting merging Chinese and American culture, 'Firefly' also saw high-tech futurism blended with the traditional Wild West.

All of the agreed-upon pariahs throughout pop-culture history put their identities into the thing we decry. And yet we derive our own identities from the act of hating. We connect on the things we are disappointed in. Some may argue that nothing in history gathers a crowd like complaining about Lady Gaga's meat dress.

I learned that instead of relying on and imitating American music, there is a better chance for an Asian artist to succeed if he or she follows his or her own culture.

My father was a businessman, but my mother was an intellectual. She cared about culture, politics, and philosophy, so I became interested in the protest aspect of Latin American art.

I think Indians will pick up on a lot of the direct commentary on Delhi, which Americans will obviously miss, while Americans might get more out of watching pop-culture play out in unusual ways in a foreign country. Who knows?

Ken Griffey changed the game, but he also represented pop culture and the youth - how he wore his hat backwards, how he swung the bat and walked off...he brought energy to the game, class to the game. He was kind of the first person I really watched. He was a big influence.

To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American.

I never watched Lost. I just thought it would be fun to be part of something that was such a big part of pop culture. But I thought I was going to be acting with more of the other people. I didn't know that I was going to be on my own on the island, doing this whole other storyline.

There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is.

Gay TV has been immensely important in transforming American culture in a more gay-positive direction.

I criticized the whole American songwriting industry and the pop side of it and I was bitter about it. And I stepped back and thought 'Why are you bitter? You can't just stand there like every other indie musician and criticize this so-called 'generic' music when you're not doing anything to challenge that.'

Horsemanship and the cowboy lifestyle and my culture as a Native American are all three things that are very, very important to me.

It's one of the central problems of American culture: telling you if you're younger, more beautiful, more famous, whatever, that then you'll be happy.

I see people getting so caught up in celebrating diversity that they are neglecting their commonality. I don't see this as a good thing. The Chinese culture has survived for more than five thousand years in part because the Chinese have embraced the same language and culture. I hope I am wrong about this, and that the flame is still on beneath the great American melting pot. Americans need each other, and a house divided, no matter the color of its occupants, is still divided. And divided we all fall.

The pop culture has become more frenetic. There are more forces at work that are far more invasive. However, I think it would be perfectly doable to defend ones loved ones from some of the harsher aspects of public life. You’re not going to be a 100% successful. But you can see when it’s on purpose. It’s so blatantly easy to avoid at times and you can tell when it was unavoidable.

I can represent my culture while helping not only the Chinese-American community, but also the community at large.

I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.

I remember distinctly not seeing myself. I didn't see myself in black culture, white culture, mass culture.

I think it is harder to scare young people because there is an ironic hipster stance that you have to take in relation to pop culture. You know you're being manipulated. People are so aware of the manipulation. We're all aware that movies toy with us and pull our strings. There was a time when people just didn't acknowledge that as much.

I've never seen myself as a pop singer. I grew up listening to gospel, soul and rock. My approach to pop is that, when I was doing my album, I wanted to have raw, genuine lyrics, but wanted it to be easy to process.

As a young artist in New York, I thought about postwar Japan - the consumer culture and the loose, deboned feeling prevalent in the character and animation culture. Mixing all those up in order to portray Japanese culture and society was my work.

Culture is sustained in our synapses...It's more than what can be reduced to binary code and uploaded onto the Net. To remain vital, culture must be renewed in the minds of the members of every generation. Outsource memory, and culture withers.

I would say my being disheartened has more to do with American culture than anything else. We are becoming a very shallow culture. My goodness, the celebrity ethos has taken over completely. Turn on the television and you see that over and over. There's very little substance. And so, everything gets shorter. Everything is entertainment oriented. Our churches reflect that. A thirty-five minute sermon without a Power Point or video clips is rare these days. That's not true in other countries so much.

I've gone into prisons, I've gone into schools, I've gone into corporations, all over the world. It doesn't matter where you go, people are essentially the same. Our culture is different, but culture is nothing but group habit, culture is paradigm and when you get past the culture, people are essentially the same.

I moved here when I was 20 to go to college. After I moved here, I became much more aware of the importance of the culture and literature to my life. Sometimes when you're immersed in something, you just don't notice it very much. Moving away makes you appreciate your culture. Living here, I've thought more and more about India, and what being Indian-American means to me. And it's made me incorporate things from Indian literature into my own writing.

Culture dictated from above is the enemy of folk music. Whether it's stuffy classical music or pre-engineered pop where somebody's paid tons of money to make sure that everyone hears this song a certain number of times a day - that feels like the opposite of folk music.

Something is very, very wrong with American culture. The signs are everywhere. I think the country is in almost terminal descent.

I think all these pop cultural media often reflect conversations we're having in the real world at that moment in time. I think one of the big conversations we're having as a culture is we thought we'd solved sexism and racism, and we're realizing more and more that we haven't.

When my life is stressful, my favorite game is called 'Pop It,' where you pop balloons and prizes fall out. It's a five-minute game that focuses my mind and gives me extra attention when I'm stressed.

I'm raising kids, and so much of American culture sustains me and gives me things to think about and work on.

American mass media culture, with its celebrities, shopping hysteria, sound bites, formulaic plots, received ideas, and nauseating repetitions, depresses me.

I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to.