Popular Culture Quotes

• The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism.

  Carl Bernstein

  Real, People, Ordinary

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Popular culture no longer craves archangels and new dawns. Pop culture traffics in vampires and deads of night.

  James Wolcott

  Night, Vampire, Dawn

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• Reality TV is sleazy, it is manipulative. It is as momentary as anything in popular culture.

  Morley Safer

  Reality, Popular Song, Culture

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• If there are signs that Americans bow to the gods of advertising, there are equally indications that people find the gods ridiculous. It is part of the popular culture that advertisements are silly.

  Michael Schudson

  Silly, People, Culture

  Michael Schudson (2013). “Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion (RLE Advertising): Its Dubious Impact on American Society”, p.242, Routledge

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• The cacophony of contemporary popular culture makes it hard to discern the call of truth and wisdom. There is no area in which practicing asceticism is more important.

  Rod Dreher

  Important, Cacophony, Culture

  Rod Dreher (2010). “Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots”, p.2, Crown

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• May the Force be with you.

  George Lucas

  Movie, Film History, Psychics

  Star Wars (motion picture) (1977)

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• I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.

  Mario Puzo

  Movie, Hollywood Films, Film History

  The Godfather ch. 1 (1969)

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• Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

  Clark Gable

  Movie, Badass, Wind

  "Fictional character: Rhett Butler". "Gone with the Wind", 1939.

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• You can't handle the truth!

  Jack Nicholson

  Movie, Memorable, Great Year

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• I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.

  Marlon Brando

  Movie, Film History, Hollywood Films

  "Fictional character: Don Vito Corleone". "The Godfather", www.imdb.com. March 14, 1972.

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• Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change.

  John Podhoretz

  Reflection, Culture, Causes

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• Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom.

  Camille Paglia

  Art, Sex, Eye

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

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• Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.

  Carl Bernstein

  Ordinary, Today, Garbage

  "An A-Z of cultural terms". The Guardian, June 3, 1992.

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• I just don't care about popular culture. It looks to me pointless and superficial. If I had free time I'd rather read a 19th century novel.

  Noam Chomsky

  Culture, Looks, Care

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

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• Popular culture has become engorged, broadening and thickening until it's the only culture anyone notices.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Culture

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• Whether we're talking about race or gender or class, popular culture is where the pedagogy is, it's where the learning is.

  Bell Hooks

  Race, Talking, Class

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• At its best, cinema does retain a remarkable ability to speak to people of every age, from every background, and in ways that almost any other art form in popular culture struggles to compete with.

  David Puttnam

  Art, Struggle, People

  "A Lord’s Call To Arms: David Puttnam Addresses Edinburgh" by Peter Knegt, www.indiewire.com. June 22, 2009.

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• In spite of conflicting signals - and in spite of a popular culture that sometimes puts down their innocence - most of our kids are good kids. Large numbers do volunteer work. Nearly all believe in God, and most practice their faith. Teen pregnancy and violence are actually going down. Across America, under a program called True Love Waits, nearly a million teens have pledged themselves to abstain from sex until marriage.

  George W. Bush

  Sex, Believe, Pregnancy

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• We've always believed that popular culture and populist politics go hand in hand. It's an honor to be working with so many respected and influential artists, and we're indebted to them for having the courage to speak out at a time when our country so desperately needs change. For our 2.5 million members and far beyond, the Vote for Change tour will have a seismic cultural impact.

  Eli Pariser

  Country, Artist, Impact

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• I think we really need a movement to drive how popular culture understands the issues that feminists care about. When I think about the LGBT movement for example, they have had a really intentional strategy to try to change images and representation of LGBT people in the media and the culture. It really moved the dial politically. That's what is needed in the women's movement - a strategy that can drive awareness and culture change.

  Ai-jen Poo

  Thinking, Issues, Media

  "An incredible container for transformation". Interview with Sheila Bapat, logger.believermag.com. May 9, 2014.

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• The term 'popular culture' always used to mean what the people do - pop songs, folk songs, music in general used to live because people would sing these songs and tell these stories together. Then all of these new technologies came out and it became the work of professionals.

  Joseph Gordon-Levitt

  Song, Mean, Technology

  Interview with Amy Kaufman, www.thewrap.com. October 7, 2010.

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• We will never know the extent of the damage movies are doing to us, but movie art, it appears, thrives on moral chaos. When the country is paralyzed, the popular culture may tell us why. After innocence, winners become losers. Movies are probably inuring us to corruption; the sellout is the hero-survivor for our times.

  Pauline Kael

  Country, Art, Hero

  Pauline Kael (1994). “For keeps”, E P Dutton

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• As one might expect in a society with mass communications and mass markets, the pseudo-ethic says that whatever is popular, is right. Where the traditional ethic derives its sanction from the superiority of a few, the pseudo-ethic derives its sanction from the inferiority of a great many. The pseudo-ethic is keyed, not to the spiritually gifted, but to the spiritually ungifted.

  Margaret Halsey

  Communication, Culture, Inferiority

  Margaret Halsey (1964). “The Corrupted Giant: A Speculation on American Politics and Morals”

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• I don't think we have enough imaginary creatures in cinema. It seems like we're stuck with zombies, vampires, and werewolves. We should have everything. We should have minotaurs. We should have elves. We should have mermen in popular culture. But instead we've stuck with vampires.

  Neil Jordan

  Thinking, Should Have, Zombie

  "Q&A: Neil Jordan, Master of the Vampire Movie". Interview with Paul Schrodt, www.esquire.com. June 27, 2013.

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• We are being swallowed up by the popular culture of the United States, but then the Americans are being swallowed up by it too. It's just as much a threat to American culture as it is to ours.

  Northrop Frye

  United States, Culture, Threat

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