Brazilian culture was never monolithic. Since the 16th century, Brazilian has been an amalgamation of orthodox Iberian, indigenous, and African values, as well as more recent Western values, developed in northern Europe and the United States, such as equality, democracy, and efficiency. At times there are subtle or open conflicts, particularly between norms of Mediterranean and Anglo-Saxon origin, or between practices of European versus Amerindian or African origin. Brazil is remarkable for the way in which there is unity in cultural variety. Sometimes the values and practices of different origins have blended with each other, as in the case of Afro-Brazilian religious syncretism or liberation theology.

Another way of reconciling variety has been the often considerable distance between actual practices, which conform with tradition, and official norms, which generally follow the positivist logic of "order and progress" that underlay the establishment of the republic in 1889. The difference between theory and practice, is a constant throughout Brazilian history.

In the 1990s, many people ignore laws that are not enforced, or allege that doing the right thing would be fine but that they deficiency the conditions. The aphorism that sums up a common attitude about doing one's duty is, "No one is made of iron". The relaxed attitude is reinforced by the fact that laws or norms are often seen as having been imposed from the outside, rather than being the result of a social contract accomplished for the common good. Thus, Brazilians, who are known for pragmatism, have become adept at living with idealistic rules, on the one hand, and actual practices that are often quite divergent, on the other. They switch easily between different cultural codes ranging from "orthodox" values, such as machismo and paternalism, to "modern" values and social norms that favor women and equality.