Culture
Main article: Culture of EuropeThe culture of Europe can be described as a series of overlapping cultures; cultural mixes exist across the continent. There are cultural innovations and movements, sometimes at odds with each other. Thus the question of "common culture" or "common values" is complex.
The foundation of European culture was laid by the Greeks, strengthened by the Romans, stabilised by Christianity, reformed by the 15th-century Renaissance and Reformation, modernised by the 18th century Age of Enlightenment and globalised by successive European empires between the 16th and 20th centuries.
According to historian Hilaire Belloc, for several centuries the peoples of Europe based their self-identification on the remaining traces of the Roman culture and on concept of Christendom, because many European-wide military alliances were of religious nature: the Crusades (1095–1291), the Reconquista (711-1492), the Battle of Lepanto (1571).
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The higher, the more exalted the society, the greater is its culture and refinement, and the less does gossip prevail. People in such circles find too much of interest in the world of art and literature and science to discuss, without gloating over the shortcomings of their neighbors.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“... there are some who, believing that all is for the best in the best of possible worlds, and that to-morrow is necessarily better than to-day, may think that if culture is a good thing we shall infallibly be found to have more of it that we had a generation since; and that if we can be shown not to have more of it, it can be shown not to be worth seeking.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“We belong to an age whose culture is in danger of perishing through the means to culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)