Rhode Island in Popular Culture

Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, island, popular and/or culture:

“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

“The shifting islands! who would not be willing that his house should be undermined by such a foe! The inhabitant of an island can tell what currents formed the land which he cultivates; and his earth is still being created or destroyed. There before his door, perchance, still empties the stream which brought down the material of his farm ages before, and is still bringing it down or washing it away,—the graceful, gentle robber!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)

“Our culture is ill-equipped to assert the bourgeois values which would be the salvation of the under-class, because we have lost those values ourselves.”
—Norman Podhoretz (b. 1930)