Cultural Criticism Quotes

“What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.”
― Theodor W. Adorno

“All great art is praise.”
― John Ruskin, Lectures on Art

“Business people - Your business - is your greatest prejudice: it ties you to your locality, to the company you keep, to the inclinations you feel. Diligent in business - but indolent in spirit, content with your inadequacy, and with the cloak of duty hung over this contentment: that is how you live, that is how you want your children to live!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“Psychotherapy is the art of finding the angel of hope in the midst of terror, despair and madness.”
― Cloe Madanes

“I avoided one-on-one situations, eye contact, and healthy relationships. Instead I took refuge in drinking too much, cheap sex, and sarcasm.”
― Jason Najum, Delusions of Grandeur

“Everything around me affirmed there was nothing else I could do – yet everything inside me cried that I was not doing enough.”
― Jason Najum, Delusions of Grandeur

“When you trick somebody into participating in a small-time fraud, it's called a 'scam.' But when the scam is so big that people have no choice but to participate, it's called 'economics.”
― Mark Russell

“A lifelong movie I already knew the ending to”
― Jason Najum, Delusions of Grandeur

“Unfortunately, human progress is generally determined not by our spiritual, our emotional, and our intellectual development but by that of our technologies.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Humanity has been fetishizing the end of the world ever since we invented its beginning. It’s just easier to destroy it than to heal it, I guess. Chalk it up to our intellectually lazy nature.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“Have I mentioned the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, and the collapse of a section of the Bay Bridge, or the Oakland ‘firestorm’ of 1991? No need. There are already there, in my narratives that fail to mention them, in my dreams that fail to represent them.”
― Robert Appelbaum, Working the Aisles: A Life in Consumption

“When you trick somebody into participating in a small-time fraud, it's called a 'scam.' But when the scam is so big that people have no choice but to participate, it's called 'economics.”
― Mark Russell, The Flintstones Volume 2

“With some things we are trying to solve some of the problems that are caused by some of the things with which we are trying to solve some of the problems that are caused by some things.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“My type of politics leads to a clash of religions, a clash of cultures and a clash of races. Your type of politics unifies under an imperial cause. In the end I will win, because dividing and conquering is far easier than unifying the hearts of men.”
― Rehan Khan, A Tudor Turk

“today is a good day for murder love hatred sex violence drugs revisionist attitudes anarchy of the sense letters and the like teatime exists in the MinD snarling underground day addiction”
― Scott C. Holstad, Hang Gliding on X

“We go looking for why the art we love is moral even if the art we love is a donut.”
― Tamsyn Muir

“The capacity for criticism is the capacity for enjoyment. They don't have to be kept in touch with each other. They are a single propensity that has to keep in touch with itself.”
― Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“Joshua took another small sip from his wine glass as his gaze and his thoughts drifted away from the flat-screen television mounted above the marbled fireplace to ponder a roomful of sports jackets and pantsuits and in some cases cocktail dresses but only of neutral tones and minimal detailing if for no other reason than to avoid becoming the subject of the next petty scandal that would nevertheless send shockwaves through their haughty and insular world. The way they stood in their intimate clusters. Their drink glasses held in various poses of sophistication. And whenever they did bring glass to mouth in accordance with judiciously preset intervals it was also for show, as he believed was true of their subdued conversations, which, from where he was sitting, appeared to be nothing more than the unintelligible murmurings of barely moving lips. A whole list of observations came to mind. Not one of them flattering in any way. The atmosphere thick with that certain stuffiness and elitist redolence of an ivy league alumni fundraising gala. Of course, he readily admitted to himself that out of everyone in the room he was very likely the most materially bereft and least credentialed and that this stinging truth undoubtedly inflamed his plebeian impulse. But that’s not what was bugging him.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“But the people of Harappa lived in peace and prosperity for a period about as long as Christianity has been on the earth. And yet, not a single war. Quite the contrast, wouldn’t you say?”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“Oh, I don’t know,” Karen groaned, feeling suddenly very feisty. “I just don’t think anyone with a loose appendage swinging between their legs—which we know corresponds to a loose screw in the brain—could ever be trusted with something as delicate as the well-being of someone not similarly encumbered.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“Disillusionment is the diversion into nostalgia and away from the chaotic flux and information overload of 21st century life. Popular entertainment once provided a similar refuge but has become an ideological battleground, not a comforting escape to recharge.”
― Stewart Stafford

“When will Scottish culture be able to sustain a body of criticism worthy of its cultural production?”
― Alec Finlay, Justified Sinners: An Archaeology of Scottish Counter Culture, 1960 - 2000

“... she told me if I went on like this, giving myself away to anyone and everyone, I'd wind up fragmented, less of a person, like these oversexed Americans. She was not entirely wrong”
― Sanjena Sathian, Goddess Complex

“Men think that misogyny is a women's issue; women's to endure and women's to fix. White people think that racism is a pet issue for people of color; not like the pure, economic grievances of the working class. Rape is a rape victim's problem: What was she wearing? Where was she walking? Had she had sex before?”
― Lindy West, The Witches Are Coming

“That psychologist wanted me to come back and see him and the psychiatrist wanted to help my scrambled thoughts, but these people, they're just priests of the new religion. Every unpalatable thought and inconclusive experience is a catastrophe to be treated. They hear confession and then offer salvation and sacraments in the form of labels and pills.”
― Scott Pearce, The Rider on the Bridge