All Quotes

"Culture binds men and women in a deeper way than political and even geographical borders—unless borders are the material expression of the culture of a nation that may have also organized itself in a state, which in this case is the visible manifestation of a national culture."

"A culture is a total way of life. It embraces what people ate and what they wore; the way they walked and the way they talked; the manner in which they treated death and greeted the newborn."

"Woman—mother and wife—witness of the development of man's genius, can appreciate the great significance of the culture of thought and knowledge."

"Ecosystems majorly shape culture — but then that culture can be exported and persist in radically different places for millennia. Stated most straightforwardly, most of earth’s humans have inherited their beliefs about the nature of birth and death and everything in between and thereafter from preliterate Middle Eastern pastoralists."

"If the West is heading toward some kind of crisis, it's worth asking ourselves a few basic questions. Modern society as we normally define it—a secular culture built around tolerance, reason, and democratic values—occupies a rather small portion of the world, and there are signs that it is shrinking. Is modernity the inexorable force of progress that we tend to assume? Is it a mere moment of human history that is fast fading? If it is something to value, how can we rediscover it, separate the good and the bad in it, make it relevant and vital?"

"The multitude are matter-of-fact. They live in commonplace concerns and interests. Their problems are, how to get more plentiful and better food and drink, more comfortable and beautiful clothing, more commodious dwellings, for themselves and their children. When they seek relaxation from their labors for material things, they gossip of the daily happenings, or they play games or dance or go to the theatre or club, or they travel or they read story books, or accounts in the newspapers of elections, murders, peculations, marriages, divorces, failures and successes in business; or they simply sit in a kind of lethargy. They fall asleep and awake to tread again the beaten path. While such is their life, it is not possible that they should take interest or find pleasure in religion, poetry, philosophy, or art. To ask them to read books whose life-breath is pure thought and beauty is as though one asked them to read things written in a language they do not understand and have no desire to learn. A taste for the best books, as a taste for whatever is best, is acquired; and it can be acquired only by long study and practice. It is a result of free and disinterested self-activity, of efforts to attain what rarely brings other reward than the consciousness of having loved and striven for the best. But the many have little appreciation of what does not flatter or soothe the senses. Their world, like the world of children and animals, is good enough for them; meat and drink, dance and song, are worth more, in their eyes, than all the thoughts of all the literatures. A love tale is better than a great poem, and the story of a bandit makes Plutarch seem tiresome. This is what they think and feel, and what, so long as they remain what they are, they will continue to think and feel. We do not urge a child to read Plato—why should we find fault with the many for not loving the best books?"

"One ought not to hoard culture. It should be adapted and infused into society as a leaven. Liberality of culture does not mean illiberality of its benefits."

"Cultural products which present foreign wars as the heroic effort of a master race to ennoble mankind are, to the degree they are successful as art, objectively in the interests of imperialists, who are people who make foreign wars against other races for profit."

"Cultural products that present people who have no money or power as innately stupid or depraved, and thus unworthy of money or power, are in the interests of the ruling class and the power structure as it stands."

"Cultural products which present women who do not want to be household slaves or universal mothers or sex objects as bitches or sexual failures objectively aid male supremacy."

"[Culture is] that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."

"I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it."

"No one can take culture seriously if he believes that it is only the uppermost of several layers of epiphenomena resting on a primary reality of economic activity."

"Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Culture's got to go"

"Rona Barrett: If you lost your fortune today, what would you do tomorrow? Donald Trump: Maybe I’d run for president. I don’t know."

"Rona Barrett: Would you like to be the President of the United States? Donald Trump: I really don't believe I would, Rona. But I would like to see somebody as the president who could do the job, and there are very capable people in this country. Barrett: Why wouldn't you dedicate yourself to public service? Trump: Because I think it's a very mean life. I would love, and I would dedicate my life to this country but I see it as being a mean life, and I also see it in somebody with strong views, and somebody with the kind of views that are maybe a little bit unpopular, which may be right, but may be unpopular, wouldn't necessarily have a chance of getting elected against somebody with no great brain but a big smile."

"Rona Barrett: How would you like to be remembered? Donald Trump: Well, as somebody that’s contributed something to the United States and to the City of New York, and to the various other places that I’m going, and somebody that’s done a little bit better than other people at what he does."

"I said, 'I will build you this incredible, gorgeous, gleaming hotel. I will put people to work in the construction trades and save hotel jobs and the Grand Central area will come around.' So the city made the deal."

"Give them the old Trump bullshit," he told the architect Der Scutt before a presentation of the Trump Tower design at a press conference in 1980. "Tell them it is going to be a million square feet, sixty-eight stories."

"Some people have an ability to negotiate. It's an art you're basically born with. You either have it or you don't."

"It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles. I think I know most of it anyway. You're talking about just getting updated on a situation"

"I have featured and will always continue to feature my name prominently in all my enterprises."

"I look at things for the art sake and the beauty sake and for the deal sake."

"I'm not big on compromise. I understand compromise. Sometimes compromise is the right answer, but oftentimes compromise is the equivalent of defeat, and I don't like being defeated."

"Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so."

"How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!"

"Let our politicians give back our police department's power to keep us safe. Unshackle them from the constant chant of "police brutality" which every petty criminal hurls immediately at an officer who has just risked his or her life to save another's."

"Of course I hate these people and let's all hate these people because maybe hate is what we need if we're gonna get something done."

"I like to hire people that I've seen in action. I often hire people that were on the opposing side of a deal that I respect."

"I think if this country gets any kinder or gentler, it's literally going to cease to exist."

"I don't do it for the money. I've got enough, much more than I'll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form."

"I like thinking big. I always have. To me it's very simple: if you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. Most people think small, because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. And that gives people like me a great advantage."

"I'm a great believer in asking everyone for an opinion before I make a decision. ... I ask and I ask and I ask, until I begin to get a gut feeling about something. And that's when I make a decision. I have learned much more from conducting my own random surveys than I could ever have learned from the greatest of consulting firms."

"You can't con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on."

"You can't be scared. You do your thing, you hold your ground, you stand up tall, and whatever happens, happens."

"What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate."

"She turned out to be the wife of a man who was then the prime minister of a major country. I'd heard stories about this lady, but I never thought much of them until that night. We met at the house of the friend who'd phoned me. After we'd all chatted for a while in the living room, the four of us who already knew each other drifted out to the kitchen, leaving Ben and Madame X in the living room to get better acquainted. Which they did. In fact, when we drifted back in, about ten minutes later, she and Ben were involved in an incredibly torrid scene on the couch. I remember standing there and thinking to myself, "Well, Donald, you're not in Queens anymore.""

""When a man leaves a woman, especially when it was perceived that he has left for a piece of ass—a good one!—there are 50 percent of the population who will love the woman who was left," he told me."

""I want five children, like in my own family, because with five, then I will know that one will be guaranteed to turn out like me," Donald told a close friend."

"Very good question. (pause) I don't think it's a sin but I don't think it should be done."

"Leona Helmsley is a truly evil human being. She treated employees worse than any human being I've ever witnessed and I've dealt with some of the toughest human beings alive."

"When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength."

"I said to the bankers, "Listen, fellows, if I have a problem, then you have a problem. We have to find a way out or it's going to be a difficult time for both of us.""

"You know, it doesn't really matter what the media writes as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass."

"You have to treat 'em [women] like s---"

"Wow! Just think — in a couple of years I'll be dating you."

"He's a good guy, and he's not going to hurt anybody. . . . He treated his wife well and . . . he will treat Marla well."

"I'm gonna be dating her in ten years."

"Howard Stern: So, you treat women with respect? Donald Trump: Uh, I can't say that either. Stern: Alright, good."

"You know, if you’re young, and in this era, and if you have any guilt about not having gone to Vietnam, we have our own Vietnam—it’s called the dating game... Dating is like being in Vietnam. You’re the equivalent of a soldier going over to Vietnam."