Top 239 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Anthropologists - Page 4

I was less successful in my attempts to effect preventive vaccination against typhus by using the virus and in trying to produce large quantities of serum using large animals

Language has multiple uses, and is embedded in different forms of life. It is not necessary to have this grand concept of "humanity" in order to behave decently.

No word meaning "art" occurs in Aivilik, nor does "artist": there are only people. Nor is any distinction made between utilitarian and decorative objects. The Aivilik say simply, "A man should do all things properly."

The artist in all societies has traditionally been a kind of barometer, more sensitive to nuances and changes than others, because he is more deeply immersed in his culture and more interested in its meanings.

Each society is a hero system which promises victory over evil and death.

The Jews cannot be classed as a 'race' per se, they are an ethnic group. '...the Jews form an ethnic group; that like all ethnic groups they have their own racial elements distributed in their own proportions; like all or most ethnic groups they have their 'look,' a part of their cultural heritage that both preserves and expresses their cultural solidarity...they have developed a special racial sub-type and a special pattern of facial and bodily expression.

What you give ought to be in direct relationship to what you've received. If you have been blessed with a great deal, then you have a lot of giving to do.

There are two great injustices that can befall a child. One is to punish him for something he didn't do. The other is to let him get away with doing something he knows is wrong.

Believers are often thought of as people who have some kind of private conviction or repudiation of something, whereas "the faithful" refers to a relationship, which was also incidentally the earlier sense of "faith" in premodern, preliberal Christianity. This is not to say, incidentally, that "faith" refers simply to external behavior as opposed to internal belief but that it refers to an act.

It seems to be a general rule that sciences begin their development with the unusual. They have to develop considerable sophistication before they interest themselves in the commonplace.

These strengths, and our civilization in general, have reached an apogee with the end of the apocalyptic threats of the Cold War and the end - or at least waning - of less successful, and ultimately less "just," political and economic systems. At the turn of the 21st century we appear to be entering our greatest century, a golden age. The challenge that we face is similar to that of the Classic Maya civilization: we have set in motion a "runaway train" of success.

Only a small percentage of novelists, painters, musicians, scientists, anywhere in the world, are talented. But there are many more in Hollywood than one would expect from looking movies.

There are not many of us African American Sister Presidents, and those of us who are in this field do not have an easy time of it. Why the story goes that one Black woman college president died and went to hell, and it was two weeks before she realized that she wasn't still on the job.

The practice of democracy means that I, one person, one humble person, nevertheless feel some responsibility if the officials for whose election I was responsible go too far out of line.

the distinction between 'prejudice' and 'principle' is itself a matter of prejudice.

Public schools are where the next generation of leaders are educated and where cultural exchange will take place.

The deepest sins are camouflaged as holiness.

I trust the mystery. I trust what comes in silence and what comes in nature where there's no diversion. I think the lack of stimulation allows us to hear and experience a deeper river that's constant, still, vibrant, and real. And the process of deep listening with attention and intention catalyzes and mobilizes exactly what's needed at that time.

My first attempts to transmit typhus to laboratory animals, including the smaller species of monkeys, had failed, as had those of my predecessors, for reasons which I can easily supply today

The Cheyenne Indians: their history and lifeways : edited and illustrated

The artist takes in the world, but instead of being oppressed by it, he reworks it in his own personality and recreates it in the work of art.

Most of the doctors in the Tunisian administration, especially those in country districts, contracted typhus and approximately one third of them died of it

The four Ways reflect a pervasive belief that life will be simple if we practice four basic principles: Show up or choose to be present, Pay attention to what has heart and meaning, Tell the truth without blame or judgment, and Be open, rather than attached to, the outcome.

To behave "humanely" it is perfectly possible to do without the notion of "humanity."

Linde's Danger to Self is a warm, candid and appealing account of being an emergency room psychiatrist. Linde captures the non-conformist, hard-boiled style of the psychiatrists who work in this setting.

I learned very early on that it's necessary but not sufficient for scientists to go to school board meetings and say, 'We shouldn't be teaching creationism.' Being right doesn't mean it'll pass.

One day, a woman found herself standing at Heaven's gate. The angels' only question to her was, "Zusai, why weren't you Zusai?" Within that simple question lies the heart of all our soul work. If you are David, why aren't you fully David? If you are Susan, why aren't you completely Susan? We are here on Earth to become who we are meant to be.

Rarely do we realize that if we simply take time to marvel at life’s gifts and give thanks for them, we activate stunning opportunities to increase their influence in our lives.

The propensity to intellectualize is itself both essential and dangerous. I think in our modern world we are much more aware of its essential character than of its dangers, and that is why I think of it as being an expression of transcendence.

Show me someone content with mediocrity and I'll show you someone destined for failure.

The White House is now essentially a TV performance.

The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.

Up to a certain point anxiety is good, for it promotes action. Beyond that point we freeze any fixed attitudes or rush about without thinking deeply from one decision to another.

With apologies to the green movement, "sustainability" is a myth. History and archaeology show that societies are always moving to the edge of crisis, "falling forward" through growth, but then responding often successfully to the problems created. What we can hope for is that with a somewhat more controlled level of growth, and with longer-term preparations for change, we can keep responding to the inevitable smaller crises, as they arise, and continue to postpone until later and later the, perhaps ultimately inevitable, end of our civilization.

Both magic and religion are based strictly on mythological tradition, and they also both exist in the atmosphere of the miraculous, in a constant revelation of their wonder-working power. They both are surrounded by taboos and observances which mark off their acts from those of the profane world.

The possible signs of a coming collapse are the same as the greatest strengths of Western civilization: democracy, capitalism, the generally peaceful linking of world economic systems, our amazing success in harnessing the powers of nature to the betterment of the human condition in health, subsistence, longevity. These are the hallmarks of our society - its most successful elements.

Whenever there is polarization, there is an unhappy tendency to think the truth lies somewhere in between.

The content of the curriculum should never exclude the realities of the very students who must intellectually wrestle with it. When students study all worlds except their own, they are miseducated.

Male and female gossip also sounds different, as women use more animated tones, more detail and more feedback.

Women are more skilled than men at making gossip entertaining.

To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything.

The careful scholarship of the dedicated amateur mycophile R. Gordon Wasson reads like an exciting scientific detective story. Moreover, his willingness to pursue the quest through the wide range of linguistics, archeology, folklore, philology, ethnobotany, plant ecology, human physiology, and prehistory constitutes an object lesson to all holistic professional students of man.

Imprisonment in the contemporary is the worst of all intellectual tyrannies.

The more we pull together toward a new day, the less it matters what pushed us apart in the past.

When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being.

Why is it that aggression in the name of God shocks secular liberal sensibilities, whereas the act of killing in the name of the secular nation, or of democracy, does not?

The myth of black women profiting at the expense of black men is the oldest rap around.

"Hypercoherence" is one of the most dangerous threats to the long-term survival of our civilization. Hypercoherence is the close efficient linkage of all parts of the world economic, communication and transport systems. It has been crucial in the spread of great innovations, the rise of world wealth, and even the dissemination of democratic concepts and ethical values and the defeat of oppressive regimes.

What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms.

I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever man does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, of the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise it is false. Whatever is achieved must be achieved with the full exercise of passion, of vision, of pain, of fear, and of sorrow. How do we know, that our part of the meaning of the universe might not be a rhythm in sorrow?

Whatever may be the sociological value of the legal fiction that 'all men are born free and equal,' there can be no doubt that...in its biological application, at any rate, this statement is one of the most stupendous falsehoods ever uttered by man through his misbegotten gift of articulate speech.

Many of the tribal peoples of the world recognize that there are four places in nature where you can find deep peace and remember who you really are. One is in the deep woods; one is in the desert; one in the mountains and one near the ocean

Beyond Bookchin”, David Watson, of Fifth Estate, argues that aboriginal society represents a viable Utopia. He quotes favourably the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins; “We are inclined to think of hunters and gatherers as poor because they don’t have anything, perhaps better to think of them for that reason as free.

The best lives and stories are made up of minute particulars that somehow are also universal and of use to others as well as oneself.

Tradition is not something a man can learn; not a thread he picks up when he feels like it; any more than a man can choose his own ancestors. Someone lacking a tradition who would like to have one is like a man unhappily in love.

I've come close to death more times than Elizabeth Taylor has said 'I do.'

The real world is simply too terrible to admit. it tells man that he is a small trembling animal who will someday decay and die. Culture changes all of this,makes man seem important,vital to the universe. immortal in some ways

Everywhere sex is understood to be something females have that males want.

What man really fears is not so much extinction, but extinction with insignificance.