Top Anthropology Quotes

The ultimate truth is mystical truth, the ultimate reality is sacred chaos.

Somewhere beyond Tibet, among the icy peaks and secluded valleys of Central Asia, there lies an inaccessible paradise, a place of universal wisdom and ineffable peace called Shambhala . . . It is inha...

Anthropology Definition

(n.) The science of the structure and functions of the human body.

(n.) The science of man; -- sometimes used in a limited sense to mean the study of man as an object of natural history, or as an animal.

(n.) That manner of expression by which the inspired writers attribute human parts and passions to God.

The ultimate truth is mystical truth, the ultimate reality is sacred chaos. - Muzwot

I am perhaps more proud of having helped to redeem the character of the cave-man than of any other single achievement of mine in the field of anthropology.

If two people stare at each other for more than a few seconds, it means they are about to either make love or fight. Something similar might be said about human societies. If two nearby societies are...

All social interactions require some loss of freedom.

I simply would not accede to being forced into this, and would frequently be kept out of classes because of irreverent comments and mocking this religious stuff. Frankly, it stayed with me to this day...

These hapless livers were probably not always mere myths, and these legends which traced their spilt blood in the purple bloom of the violet, the scarlet stain of the anemone, or the crimson flush or...

Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is.

A man had better study what a human being is, because he's marrying one - assuming that merely being one has not been sufficient stimulus to that study.

Inside our skulls are fish, reptile and shrew brains, as well as the highest centers that allow us to integrate information in our unique way; and some of our newer brain components talk to each other...

There is more to the human mind than its evolutionary heritage.

Historical periodization always tells a story. It is a narrative device for putting meaning into the flux of historical process - creating protagonists, heroes, pace, and plot. For this reason, the di...

The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, surveying the data on contemporary hunter-gatherers, exploded the Hobbesian myth in an article entitled The Original Affluent Society. They work a lot less than we...

In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences....

It is the character of lived experience I want to explore, not the nature of man.

The technology is the independent variable, the social system the dependent variable. Social, systems are therefore determined by systems of technology; as the latter change, so do the former.

The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.

There was a time when Men functioned through the mind and Women from their heart, now its Men who feel more and women think more...

I used to say to my classes that the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to ha...