A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
~ Samuel Butler - [Culture]

Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building -- like Tower Bridge -- or a classical front put on a steel frame -- like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living -- not something added, like sugar on a pill.
~ Eric Gill - [Culture]

Culture is one thing and varnish is another.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson - [Culture]

Culture is the habit of being pleased with the best and knowing why.
~ Henry Van Dyke - [Culture]

Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.
~ Walter Lippmann - [Culture]

Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former.
~ Karl Kraus - [Culture]

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.
~ Mahatma Gandhi - [Culture]

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.
~ Albert Camus - [Culture]

General jackdaw culture, very little more than a collection of charming miscomprehensions, untargeted enthusiasms, and a general habit of skimming.
~ William Bolitho - [Culture]

High culture is nothing but a child of that European perversion called history, the obsession we have with going forward, with considering the sequence of generations a relay race in which everyone surpasses his predecessor, only to be surpassed by his successor. Without this relay race called history there would be no European art and what characterizes it: a longing for originality, a longing for change. Robespierre, Napoleon, Beethoven, Stalin, Picasso, they're all runners in the relay race, they all belong to the same stadium.
~ Milan Kundera - [Culture]