All cultures have these feelings about non-functional areas of activity. And the more time people have on their hands, the more they commit it to those areas.

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

To a man of pleasure every moment appears to be lost, which partakes not of the vivacity of amusement.

I happen to be a big fan of Western civilization; I think it beats the hell out of tyranny and starvation.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

America is just downright mean.

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you’ve become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that’s the height of intelligence.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

I didn’t just invent saying offensive things.

If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? – not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

The English don’t like concepts, really, not from a pop star. It’s alright if they come from an ‚intellectual,‘, but from a pop star you’re getting ahead of yourself. Part of the class game is that you shouldn’t rise above your station, and to start talking about concepts if you’re in the pop world is getting a bit uppity, isn’t it?

As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom.

Nobody in Singapore drinks Singapore Slings. It’s one of the first things you find out there. What you do in Singapore is eat. It’s a really food-crazy culture, where all of this great food is available in a kind of hawker-stand environment.

I don’t race cars.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

You aren’t normal if you sing to people. You aren’t a normal person. It’s nerve-racking.

You should do what other people do, unless you have a very good reason not to.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.

The equal right of all citizens to health, education, work, food, security, culture, science, and wellbeing – that is, the same rights we proclaimed when we began our struggle, in addition to those which emerge from our dreams of justice and equality for all inhabitants of our world – is what I wish for all.

Many Tibetans sacrifice their lives.

The mainstream is always under attack.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

If the standard transsexual person wants to be regarded as he or she, my sense is I’ll address you according to the part that you appear to be playing.

The unsaid rule for living in a trailer park is: ‚If the door’s shut, don’t come a-knockin.‘ But if it’s open and you’re walkin‘ by, feel free to say, ‚Hello.‘

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

In England, football is a big thing to talk about, but Liverpool, it’s a special place. You feel it when you make your first step.

Become slower in your journey through life. Practice yoga and meditation if you suffer from ‚hurry sickness.‘ Become more introspective by visiting quiet places such as churches, museums, mountains and lakes. Give yourself permission to read at least one novel a month for pleasure.

We live in a culture that relishes tearing others down. It’s ultimately more fulfilling, though, to help people reach their goals. Instead of feeling jealous, remember: If God did it for them, He can do it for you.

People who eat with their mouth open should be punched in the face.

‚WASP‘ is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it’s inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not.

The purpose of a vacation is to have the time to rest. But many of us, even when we go on vacation, don’t know how to rest. We may even come back more tired than before we left.

Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain the lazy one never.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I’m taking with me when I go.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Say ‚Toronto‘ or ‚Ontario,‘ and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency.

Many people in the western world are spoiled by the conveniences of our culture.

London is a roost for every bird.

There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it – aliens.

I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.

Traditions are a common part of our lives. They can be good, and not all traditions are wrong, but sometimes they can take the joy out of life.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.

That summer after the draft was probably the most fun I’ve ever had, because all I had to do every day was wake up and go work out for four or five hours. I got to play some golf, which I love to do, too, and then got to hang out with my family.

The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

No, I’m not a French designer either. I’m from nowhere. I’m a European, old European is all I am.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

Taking in a baseball game on TV is also a big treat.