Cultural Identity Quotes

“With the thunderous boom of each firework, Isabela’s heart sank further and further. She loved Papi, and she loved Marco. She could never choose between them.”
― Margarita Barresi, A Delicate Marriage

“The world citizen is a small leaf on the giant tree of life. They do not see a difference between the branch they were born on and the remaining branches on the tree, because they understand well that we are are all connected to the same roots. The world citizen sees each section of the world as part of their arm, leg, eyes, and heart. They do not class, contain or separate themselves or their identity by ethnicity or religion -- because they see their existence as a small part of a greater whole. When asked about their religion, the world citizen simply replies: 'My heart.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“The human heart is too grand to be wasted in the gutter of cultural exclusivity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“He sought a shore of familiarity in this ocean of unknown, and I was the first he had found.”
― Snigdha Nandipati, A Case of Culture: How Cultural Brokers Bridge Divides in Healthcare

“Life is in every culture, but no one culture is the whole of life.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Reformist or Terrorist: If You Are Terror I Am Your Grandfather

“Look from the gutter, all you see is one culture. Look from the sky, and you'll see a world full of color.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Centurion Sermon: Mental Por El Mundo

“All roots lead to Africa.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience

“Thais have a saying about a frog living inside a coconut shell. The frog believes that the world inside the shell is the whole universe. In the private investigation business, Vincent Calvino had clients who like the frog. What they saw from inside their shell blinded them, made them unable to solve a problem. So they hired Calvino. He knew the drill. Shells offered comfort and security. Leaving could be a dangerous business.”
― Christopher G. Moore, The Risk of Infidelity Index: A Vincent Calvino Crime Novel

“The Bangkok Comfort Zone - that strip running between Patpong, Soi Cowboy and Nana - was a huge bank of ice, thick as a glacier. Only you had to be around years and years to see and feel the deep chill, and by the time you had it was too late, the glacier had already dragged you under.”
― Christopher G. Moore, Comfort Zone

“You don't need to deny the self for inclusion, or to forget your roots for integration. All you gotta do, if you want collectivity, is, expand your roots and branches in cohesion.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World

“In becoming one with people, even if you lose your language, along with every last trace of your so-called cultural background, that's not a loss, but an actual fulfillment of life.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Gentalist: There's No Social Work, Only Family Work

“Make behavior your background, make behavior your culture, make behavior your identity, and the world will have all the uplift it needs.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Gentalist: There's No Social Work, Only Family Work

“If there is no place for integration in your identity there’s no way there’ll be integration in society.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Gentalist: There's No Social Work, Only Family Work

“My parents pulled memories from the root and packed them into their suitcase when we immigrated here.

Stories told enthusiastically embellished con amor y agradecimiento for growth, healing, conflict, and trauma.

Recuerdos I'll retell when I remember how I reached my American dream.
El destino final.

And how my ancestors know that.”
― Kelsey Milian Lopez, The Sociology of A Miami Girl

“We are much more than a mouthpiece for a culture,
We are much more than a showpiece of our ancestry.
I am not saying that we gotta cut off our roots,
But we mustn't let roots become chains of slavery.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amor Apocalypse: Canım Sana İhtiyacım

“The only people who'll ever figure out who they are, are those who don't know who they are - whereas those who have already accepted their ancestral heritage as their ultimate identity, have no identity to begin with - they are just lifeless photocopies of the past, nothing else.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Divane Dynamite: Only truth in the cosmos is love

“From the ground your eyes can only see a block or two. Stand on the terrace, and you could see much of a small town. The higher you go, the more you see - and as your horizon keeps expanding there comes a point when the entire planet unfolds in front of your eyes - no borders, no ideologies, no institutions - just one planet - one world. Divisions exist only in the mind of lower creatures - the higher you rise, the more undivided you become - and the more undivided you become, the more human you become. Look from the gutter, all you see is one culture. Look from the sky, and you'll see a world full of color.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Centurion Sermon: Mental Por El Mundo

“Culture integrated is culture empowered.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans

“Every atom of planet earth is teeming with potential, yet most see nothing beyond the rim of their culture.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans

“Culture transcends state.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“As the human species had expanded to the stars, history had expanded with them. Modern people were mostly concerned with the business of their own planets, their own principalities and systems. But there was still a little Earth history in the mix, a few things that would never fade from memory. Salmagard herself was from Earth, so she had a little more of that than most. But everyone knew the symbol of Nazi Germany when they saw it.”
― Sean Danker, Sons of Evagard

“সসম্মানে বেঁচে থাকার জন্য যেমন নিজের প্রতি কিছুটা শ্রদ্ধা থাকা প্রয়োজন, তেমনি সংস্কৃতিগোষ্ঠী হিসাবে আত্মপরিচয় সম্পূর্ণ গৌরবহীন হলে মাথা সোজা করে দাঁড়ানো কঠিন হয়ে পড়ে। 'পিতাঠাকুর সুলতান আছিলেন' বলে মিথ্যে আস্ফালনের প্রয়োজন নেই। কিন্তু সত্যিকার গর্বের জিনিসগুলোকে তুচ্ছতাচ্ছিল্য করা আত্মবিশ্বাসের মূলে কুঠারাঘাত করার শামিল।
(তপন রায়চৌধুরী)”
― Chinmoy Guha, আয়না ভাঙতে ভাঙতে : চিন্ময় গুহ-র সাথে কথোপকথন

“I am not sure that energy company executives who say they want to understand the concerns of Indigenous people can actually do so unless they can grasp the emotional weight and social obligations carried by people who balance on the knife-edge of permanent cultural loss.”
― Ryan Emanuel, On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice

“Wicklow's Bounty: Ode to the Irish Strawberry by Stewart Stafford

The Garden County's ruby hue;
Juicy gush with tart aftertaste,
Seeded cream teases the palate,
A Summer afternoon without haste.

Eireann's pride swallowed so well;
Sunburst flesh, chilled bitterness,
Enveloped in richest dairy pillows,
Feel the divine fingerprint finesse.

Amass nature's brief treasures,
Don't wait, dear brother/sister,
Before frosted breath chokes,
Turning land's song into a whisper.

© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“[Cultural] identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past.”
― Stuart Hall, Identity: Community Culture Difference

“Stuck In One's Craw by Stewart Stafford

Nobody's beeswax,' still, you nosily ask:
'Is it the last supper to eat that fast?'
Try blackened potato skin's bitter taste,
A heritage of hunger's grim, gaunt waste.

From Celtic mist, this heir apparent,
My grandparent's grandparent(s),
Survived Ireland's holocaust famine,
As a local catch, not New World salmon.

Crop blight drove their starving plea,
With lots cast bleak to die or flee
Genetic appetite fed the strongest,
Those who eat fastest live longest.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of the people, and ours is no exception.”
― James Baldwin

“Not a single people,' he began, as if reading line for line and at the same time continuing to look threateningly at Stavrogin, 'not one people has ever yet organized itself according to the principles of science and reason. Never has there been a single example of that, except only for a brief moment, out of stupidity. Socialism, by its very nature, must be atheism, for it has specifically proclaimed, from its very first words, that it is an atheistic construct and is intentionally organized exclusively according to the principles of science and reason. Reason and science in the life of peoples always, now and from the beginning of time, have fulfilled merely a secondary and auxiliary function; and that will be their function until the end of time. Peoples are formed and moved by another force that rules and dominates them, but whose origin is unknown and inexplicable. This force is the force of an unquenchable desire to go on to the end, while at the same time denying the end. This is the force of a ceaseless and tireless affirmation of its own being and the denial of death. It is the spirit of life, as the Scriptures say, "of living water", the drying up of which is threatened in the Apocalypse. It is the aesthetic principle, as the philosophers say, the moral principle, as they also identify it. "The search for God", as I call it more simply. The goal of all movements of peoples, in every people and in every period of its existence, is nothing but a search for God, its own God, unquestionably its own, and faith in him as the only true one. God is the synthesis of the personality of an entire people, taken from its beginning to its end. It has never been the case that all or many peoples have had a single common God, but each has certainly had its own special one. It is a sign of a people's extinction when gods begin to be held in common. When the gods come to be held in common, then the gods die and so does faith in them, along with the peoples themselves. The stronger a people, the more singular its God. There has never yet been a people without religion, that is, without the concept of evil and good. Each people has its own concept of evil and good, and its own evil and good. When many different peoples begin to hold concepts of evil and good in common, then the peoples die out, and then the very difference between evil and good begins to blur and disappear.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“The soul of this country lives in the gap-toothed smiles of gas station cashiers, the matted fur of small-town dogs, the buzzing of neon signs in small dives where a layer of dust covers every surface, the shattered spirit of drive-through employees in nowhere towns, the weird smells and carpet stains in cheap motels where the windows look out at empty parking lots.”
― Gabino Iglesias, The Devil Takes You Home

“Yet it's the idiosyncrasies of culture that keep me an outsider, and leave me with a persistent and pervasive sense of otherness, of non-belonging. Basic but nuanced knowledge; the stuff that no one really teaches you.”
― Zaina Arafat, You Exist Too Much