Coming from an Asian culture, I was always taught to respect my elders, to be a better listener than a talker.

If you respect a language and culture, it shows in your work.

The test of our social commitment and humanity is how we treat the most powerless of our fellow citizens, the respect we accord to our fellow human beings. That is what reveals our true culture.

Being Jewish is a culture and a religion; we have food, music, and land specific to us.

Chinese culture in general is not very religious. Confucianism is more a code of ethics than a religion, and ancestor worship is a way for parents to control you even after they're dead.

To play June, I had an immediate connect with her background and culture. We grew up with the same religion and shared a lot of the same values of family and spirituality. But I was really so inspired by what a modern woman she was.

The U.S. has always understood itself to be united around political principles and not around culture, whereas the nations of Europe have a much more traditional conception of nationhood that is connected to romanticism, which thinks of religion and culture as ingredients of nationhood.

In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion-, and even nation-centred cultures.

Religion is so much more than the god you pray to. The religion that you associate with, it's culture, it is family, it is background. That is something that I have always grown up with.

Homophobia is not the monopoly of any one country, culture, or religion.

No human heart is denied empathy. No religion can demolish that by indoctrination. No culture, no nation and nationalism - nothing can touch it because it is empathy.

That's what I love about Australia: we can do things the way we want to do them, because that's the way our country is - no matter what culture you come from, you can come to Australia and practise your religion, you can practise your beliefs, and you shouldn't be judged for it.

Black Consciousness seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life.

I left my husband a year after 9/11. Not because he was an American and I an Egyptian, nothing to do with culture or religion, nothing to do with 9/11. We brought out the worst in each other. But before we separated, we visited N.Y.C. one more time together for a friend's engagement, and we went to pay our respects at the site of the attacks.

Moral values, and a culture and a religion, maintaining these values are far better than laws and regulations.

I used to define success as being able to produce any result you wanted, whether it was a relationship, weight-loss, being a millionaire, impacting the culture, changing society, whatever it might be - it might be homelessness, whatever - and lately, I've redefined success as 'fulfilling your soul's purpose.'

Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, but by their own choice, Puerto Rico is not a state. The relationship has worked well for Puerto Rico - which has strengthened its culture, language and economy - and for the United States, which has helped create in Puerto Rico a showcase of democracy and prosperity for all of Latin America.

We have to bring children into a new relationship to food that connects them to culture and agriculture.

We should never denigrate any other culture but rather help people to understand the relationship between their own culture and the dominant culture. When you understand another culture or language, it does not mean that you have to lose your own culture.

I think that the United States and the Philippines have always had a good relationship with each other. We were colonized by the Americans and we have their culture and our traditions even up to this day and I think that we're very welcoming with the Americans. And I don't see any problem with that at all.

Vision without power does bring moral elevation but cannot give a lasting culture.

True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.

There is so much that is positive, wonderful even, about state schools. At a state school your kids will learn to live alongside and appreciate other kids from many diverse and different cultures.

Our culture is steeped in positive thinking - from the self-help mega-industry to college courses in positive psychology to the enduring pull of the American dream. There is no dislike button on Facebook. Nobody wants to be a downer.