105 Culture Shock Quotes

Following is our list of culture shock quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about culture.

Quick Jump To

Famous Culture Shock Quotes

The most difficult task for anyone wandering through a foreign land with the hope of gaining some insight into it is the profound need to come to terms with the lives and thoughts of strangers. — Simon Winchester

A first visit to a madhouse is always a shock. — Anna Freud

It is a bitter-sweet thing, knowing two cultures. Once you leave your birthplace nothing is ever the same. — Sarah Turnbull

that strange conflict in the American character: we pride ourselves on being the melting pot of the world but we insist on regarding most immigrants with suspicion. — Gene Tierney

People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home. — Dagobert D. Runes

It is a strange thing to come home. While yet on the journey, you cannot at all realize how strange it will be. — Selma Lagerlöf

Culture hides more than it reveals, and strangely enough what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants. — Edward T. Hall

I like when you feel like you arrive in a very different place, with a different ordering of the reality you normally think of. — James Turrell

Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents. — Italo Calvino

The tourist transports his own values and demands to his destinations and implants them like an infectious disease, decimating whatever values existed before. — Arthur Erickson

Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening. — Willa Cather

I have been a stranger in a strange land. — Bible

When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable. — Clifton Fadiman

When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable. — Clifton Paul Fadiman

Travelers never think that they are the foreigners. — Mason Cooley

Short Culture Shock Quotes

  • To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. — Aldous Huxley
  • Your culture sets your expectation for what is 'normal.' — James Clear
  • I'm a little like Marco Polo, going around and mixing cultures. — Gianni Versace
  • The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends. — Shirley Maclaine
  • Just learning to think in another language allows you to see your own culture in a better viewpoint. — Gates McFadden
Culture shock quote You dont have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
You dont have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Other Cultures Quotes

First and foremost, I'm a journalist. My business is the truth. Now, I happen to be other things, too - a pop-culture phenomenon, the most in-demand speaker on the campus lecture circuit, whatever. — Milo Yiannopoulos

Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures. — Cesar Chavez

If we continue to think and live as if we belong only to different cultures and different religions, with separate missions and goals, we will always be in self-defeating competition with each other. Once we realize we are all members of humanity, we will want to compete in the spirit of love. — Muhammad Ali

Culture shock quote Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.

The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt. — Karl Kraus

I think the basic culture of this country is European and Christian and I think that if we lose that, we lost America...I don't think we should suppress other races, but I think if we lose that White - what's the word for it - that White dominance in America, with it we lose America. — David Duke

The history of other cultures is non-existent until it erupts in confrontation with the United States. — Edward Said

Culture shock quote I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are
I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.

Tolerance, openness and understanding towards other peoples' cultures, social structures, values and faiths are now essential to the very survival of an interdependent world. — Aga Khan IV

One of the most effective ways to learn about oneself is by taking seriously the cultures of others. It forces you to pay attention to those details of life which differentiate them from you. — Edward T. Hall

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. — Henry A. Wallace

For hundreds of years Iranians have been migrating to many parts of the world. They took Islamic culture to other parts of the world and established it there. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Culture Quotes

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. — Marcus Garvey

If white privilege is a thing, why are people working so hard to be black? All of the award shows and cultural events favor black culture. — Milo Yiannopoulos

Hillary Clinton has shown no indication whatsoever of stemming the tide of Islamic immigration, or stopping our mollycoddling, and pandering to Islam. These things are direct threats. Not just to culture, but to the lives of gay people in America. — Milo Yiannopoulos

Culture shock quote Your culture is your brand
Your culture is your brand

Be grateful for challenges because... Had there been no difficulties and no thorns in the way, then [each woman and] man would have been in his primitive state and no progress made in civilisation and mental culture. — Anandi Gopal Joshi

Western culture is what is at risk from immigration from the Middle East. - Milo Yiannopoulos

Western culture is what is at risk from immigration from the Middle East. — Milo Yiannopoulos

Education means to bring out wisdom. Indoctrination means to push in knowledge. — Dick Gregory

Culture shock quote Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural l
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday's logic. — Peter Drucker

The oil is a gift bestowed by God on the Arab nation, to use after centuries of poverty, backwardness and servitude - in raising its living standards, developing its economic, social and cultural conditions, and building up its own power to meet the challenges and conspiracies besetting it. — Saddam Hussein

The majority of Western culture came out of Europe, which is not comparable to America. It came out of nation states based on geographical and ethnic foundations. America is based on principles, a very different kind of country. — Milo Yiannopoulos

We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race. — Kofi Annan

Shock Quotes

Give them quality. That's the best kind of advertising. - Milton S. Hershey

Give them quality. That's the best kind of advertising. — Milton S. Hershey

When you say, 'I am a Christian,' you are saying, 'I am mashiach,' in the Hebrew. I am a little messiah walking on earth, in other words. That is a shocking revelation. ...May I say it like this? You are a little god on earth running around — Benny Hinn

So now the perception is, yes, women are here to stay. And when I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Culture shock quote Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.
Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.

Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views. — William F. Buckley Jr.

If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet. — Niels Bohr

I can't wait to shock the doubters and prove I'm better and stronger than I was before. — Derrick Rose

Culture shock quote Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces "nice" people, not heroes. — Peter Kreeft

Brock Lesnar is not here to put smiles on people's faces. Brock Lesnar is here to shock the WWE Universe and put TEARS in the EYES of CHILDREN! — Paul Heyman

It's always better to shock people and change people's expectations than to give them exactly what they think you can do. — Jonah Hill

Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time. — Alvin Toffler

Art And Culture Quotes

Existence is movement. Action is movement. Existence is defined by the rhythm of forces in natural balance. (...) It is our appreciation for dance that allows us to see clearly the rhythms of nature and to take natural rhythm to a plane of well-organised art and culture. — Rudolf von Laban

For me fashion is an expression of art that is very closely related both to me and to my body. I see it as an expression of identity combined with desire, moods and a cultural setting. — Iris van Herpen

For one thing, Judo in reality is not a mere sport or game. I regard it as a principle of life, art and science. In fact, it is a means for personal cultural attainment. — Kano Jigoro

Art must not be concentrated in dead shrines called museums. lt must be spread everywhere – on the streets, in the trams, factories, workshops, and in the workers' homes. — Vladimir Mayakovsky

You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that is where it comes from. — Romare Bearden

How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions? — Polly Toynbee

Must we be put to shame by much smaller and poorer countries, by Ireland, France, Austria or Sweden, who have understood that a nation's support of its arts is a matter of both national pride and cultural survival? — Theodore Bikel

Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations. — Edward Sapir

I do believe that one way to bring cultures together, to develop trust between people and countries and religions, is through education. And through music and art and basketball and activities and joys that people share worldwide, regardless of ethnic background or religious orientation. — Steve Kerr

I really like the city of Vienna. I like its art, its music and its architecture. In short, I like the culture that Vienna represents. What really captures me is the period around 1900 - the time of Freud, Schnitzler and Klimt. This is the period in which the modern view of mind was born. — Eric Kandel

People Writing About Culture Shock

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Simon Winchester

Simon Winchester
quotes on education, society and religion

20 47
Read quotes by Anna Freud

Anna Freud
quotes on adolescence, love and psychology

29 635
Read quotes by Gene Tierney

Gene Tierney
quotes on education, life and love

76 876
Read quotes by Dagobert D. Runes

Dagobert D. Runes
quotes on death, love and philosophy

15 97
Read quotes by Selma Lagerlöf

Selma Lagerlöf

22 152
Read quotes by Edward T. Hall

Edward T. Hall
quotes on culture

31 652

More Culture Shock Quotes

You experience other cultures to give you a kind of shock that makes you look at your own culture. You appreciate it more as a result of being out of it, but you also realise there are some things lacking in your culture. — Mem Fox

I foresee death by culture shock. — Woody Allen

We live in a culture where the one who shouts the loudest gets the most attention. It's not in the vulgar, it's not in the shock that one finds art. And it's not the excessively beautiful. It's in between; it's in nuance. — Duane Michals

When i've done camera test, after we've shot and I've seen the monitor with the glasses (wearing a Kimono) and looking by myself in 3D. Oh my god. Especially for a Samurai film. I've never seen that. It's kind of a culture shock. — Hiroyuki Sanada

The culture is just so coarse that you have to take it to that level and people will be like, 'Whoa!' And then you can make people think about stuff. It's kind of like shock therapy. — Matt Stone

When that truth of alien intervention in our planet's affairs and our ongoing contact with an alien culture is finally revealed, it won't be frightening even though it will be a shock. — Philip J. Corso

The ways in which Oscar Wilde was attacking the Romantics that preceded him, and the Romantic ideas that preceded him, were very similar to what the glam-rockers, particularly Bowie and Bryan Ferry, were attacking in the earnestness of '60s culture. Trying to shock, but with wit, cleverness, and homosexuality. — Todd Haynes

It was a black and white film [at first]. And then it changed to colour film, and I was surprised and culture shocked when I was six or seven years old. And then HD, then 3D now. So what's going? What's coming next? It's so exciting. — Hiroyuki Sanada

A lot of people don't know the culture shock of how you can be in a rich area and then be in poverty. People don't know how different it is over there. — Wiz Khalifa

Culture shock is often felt sharply at the borders between countries, but sometimes it doesn't hit fully until you've been in a place for a long time. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

Must have been quite the culture shock, going there.” “Yes it was.” Idris doesn’t say that the real culture shock has been in coming back. — Khaled Hosseini

Whenever you do a movie, it's a culture shock. Who is it? Where are you? What are you doing? Who are these people? Where are you going now? It's kind of like how somebody describes private flying: It's hours of monotony punctuated by moments of stark terror. That's what it's like anywhere in the world, whether you're in Texas or Bucharest. — William Atherton

When I was exposed to the history and the cultural background of why women whose husbands die, why they have to become ascetic or live a life that is completely deprived of emotional or social or cultural sustenance, I was really shocked. — Deepa Mehta

When I was 24 I went to Nigeria and it was such a culture shock, growing up in Australia and suddenly being the only white man in this unit full of black men. — Bruce Beresford

When I was younger, living in an all-black neighborhood the other kids thought I was better than them because of my light skin and straight hair. Then we moved to an all-white neighborhood and that was a culture shock ... I'd been used to being around all black kids. — Halle Berry

My biggest fear was public speaking, and then having everyone know who I was, it was definitely weird at first. When I first won, it was definitely a culture shock, it was something I wasn't quite ready for. — Chris Moneymaker

When I left the U.S. for the first time, I spent my first year abroad in Japan. That culture shock and abundance of new stimuli combined with a lack of guidance forced me to develop my own approaches to learning and juggling. — Tim Ferriss

I think I did experience culture shock. When I first arrived in Boston, I was basically told to go home. "Homeboy" is what they called me - very funny. I didn't take offense. I just thought, This is exactly where I want to be. The pace was different. Houston is a sprawling city. Boston is just crammed into the size of a postage stamp. — David Biespiel

In terms of kids not liking the food, I am shocked. I know that it's not true. I know that when kids are not educated about healthy food, they have a resistance to it. The resistance comes, again, from the fast-food culture. — Alice Waters

I don't know if I can handle living in Tokyo. I feel like the culture shock would be so intense, especially with the service industry in America - you can't make up for that. Once you get a chance to travel a lot, you start to realize when that waitress comes back and asks you if you want some more to drink, that's an important moment. Nobody else does that! — Stephen Bruner

Well, I think it's just remarkable how wrong the conventional wisdom was. It was utterly shocking that Donald Trump won to people who live on the coasts, but to people who live in the areas that I come from, it was utterly predictable. And that suggests something really, really broken about our political culture. — James Vance

Liberals create a world that's not real. They create a world where it's impossible to be obedient. It's impossible to go through the day not violating some precious liberal tenet. And, as such, they end up getting rid of people. So somebody like Trump comes along and it's culture shock, it's all kinds of things. And a guy like Trump would not be permitted in polite Washington society. — Rush Limbaugh

Growing up in Bombay made me immune to culture shock, in a way. So, culture shock is not part of my DNA. — Freida Pinto

Going there [Japan] in the early 80s was quite a culture shock. I think the bombardment of Shinjuku and all that would have filtered through, which certainly informed things we later filmed. — Stephen Mallinder

It's a culture shock to go from obscurity to notoriety in a flash. Its more to it than talent and money; its pressure, stress, enemies, critics; you have to develop relationships and a team. There are all of these things that go along with taking a leap and following your dreams. — T. D. Jakes

I moved from Italy to Oregon in the '80s - sort of like moving to the middle of a "Duck Dynasty" episode, which was massive culture shock to say the least. — Rose McGowan

Moving to London was a culture shock, but in a really good way. I'm more aware now, and I'm less trusting of people in the music industry. — Nina Nesbitt

If I'd grown up in Atlanta and then gone to Ottumwa, Iowa it may have been culture shock, but I was used to being in a small town and used to seeing the same people all the time and going to the same grocery store every day, so it wasn't that big of a deal for me. I was just excited to be on TV. I was just jumping for joy when I got there. I wasn't making any money, but I was sure happy. — Todd Grisham

The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying 'we' when referring to the United States and, even the 'shock and awe' of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and just a little uncomfortable. — Katie Couric

America is the only country in the world where you can suffer culture shock without leaving home. — Florence King

The NBA is a culture shock for college kids, and even more so for kids from another country. The NBA is a unique environment, so there is going to be transition for any young kid, but I think coming from another country and culture is even harder. It does take a special toughness and confidence to deal with that, especially since a lot of times you don't play a lot as a young player. — Austin Ainge

I find, on my own travels, that the most depressing form of culture shock is experienced when you go into a country that is under the thumb of a dictator. — Arthur Frommer

Such techniques, including meta-discursive stuff, self-reference, irony, black humor, cynicism, grotesquerie and shock, it would be safe to say that television or televisual values rule the culture. Television is successfully using a lot of those same techniques but using them for a very different agenda, which is to sort of create an ethos and please people and to sell products to consumers. — David Foster Wallace

If you ask a Saudi Imam why women in Saudi Arabia can't drive, he'll say, 'Because Islam demands it.' But that's absurd, because - first of all - Islam demands no such thing; and secondly, the only country in the world in which women can't drive is Saudi Arabia. The inability to understand the difference between a cultural practice and religious belief is shocking among self-described intellectuals. — Reza Aslan

Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a culture shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don't use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work. — Steve Jobs

Is it shocking that it's very difficult for a news organization to do news in America now? It's not shocking because we're a culture that doesn't want news. We want entertainment. We want info-tainment. That's why CNN is having problems. — Oprah Winfrey

I think it's cultural racism more than anything, which dovetails with actual racism, but the cultural racism to me is even more shocking. — Hilton Als

One of the things I tend to do is open myself up to a variety of voices. I try to expose myself to the kind of culture shock that occurs when you talk to people who speak a different language. — Pierre Omidyar

When I arrived in America, I experienced serious culture shock. For someone with a religious upbringing, the 1960s were an extremely difficult time. Even though religion was a big part of the civil rights and peace movements, in my college religion was treated as irrelevant, hopelessly stodgy, and behind the times. — Feisal Abdul Rauf

Food is a big part of my culture, so everyone knows how to cook. When I came to America and asked a babysitter to softboil an egg for my son and she didn't know how, I was shocked. — Isabella Rossellini

To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races--the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by. — M. S. Golwalkar

Every fact of science was once Damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and "progress," everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man's refusal to bow to Authority. — Robert Anton Wilson

I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed. — Doris Lessing

After the stretch of weather we've had, this is going to be a culture shock for some people. We always end up crashing back to reality. — Paul Gross

In Conclusion

Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of culture shock quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about culture shock to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.

Citation

Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of culture shock quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.

Embed HTML Link

Copy and paste this HTML code in your webpage