Anthropologists Quotes

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

  Ruth Benedict

  Science, Differences, Safety

  110 Copy quote

• People keep asking how anthropology is different from sociology, and everybody gets nervous.

  Clifford Geertz

  People, Different, Asking

  16 Copy quote

• I think feminism has had a major impact on anthropology

  Clifford Geertz

  Thinking, Impact, Feminist

  15 Copy quote

• As a group, anthropologists are not too fond of people who work in the business world.

  Helen Fisher

  People, Groups, World

  15 Copy quote

• Anthropology in general has always been fairly hospitable to female scholars, and even to feminist scholars

  Clifford Geertz

  Feminist, Female, Anthropology

  15 Copy quote

• ...to make the world safe for democracy.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Strong Women, Tyrants, Differences

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1985). “Papers: Edited by Arthur S. Link and Others”

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• I spent nearly two years in a small village - perhaps seventy families. I've never worked harder or learned so much so fast in my life; as an anthropologist you are at work from when you open your eyes in the morning to when you close them at night.

  James C. Scott

  Morning, Eye, Night

  "An Interview with James C. Scott | Harry G. West and Celia Plender". Gastronomica Interview, gastronomica.org. March 14, 2017.

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• Anthropologists have often described what happens to a primitive society when its spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilisation. Its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organisation disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. We are now in the same condition. But we have never really understood what we have lost, for our spiritual leaders unfortunately were more interested in protecting their institutions than in understanding the mystery that symbols present.

  Carl Jung

  Spiritual, Impact, People

  10 Copy quote

• I wondered why she craved this knowledge and found myself remembering that she was, after all, an anthropologist.

  Elizabeth Kostova

  Remember, Found

  Elizabeth Kostova (2010). “The Historian”, p.354, Hachette UK

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• God created animals. And they’re loving; they’re beautiful. I feel the way (anthropologist) Jane Goodall does or any of those naturalists. I don’t find my interest in animals weird or strange at all.

  Michael Jackson

  Beautiful, Animal, Doe

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• I was surprised by the level of sophistication of the Special Operation forces. Among them were anthropologists and PhD candidates. I felt because I understand the patterns of nineteenth-century jihad in West Africa that I was definitely going to be more advanced than they were in comprehending what the militant rallying cry was.

  Eliza Griswold

  Rallying Cry, Special, Patterns

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Anthropologists have found evidence of romantic love in 170 societies. They've never found a society that did not have it.

  Helen Fisher

  Happiness, Romantic Love, Found

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• As a journalist, or an anthropologist, the convention is that people are there for you to study, and they are your objects.

  Annia Ciezadlo

  People, Study, Conventions

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.

  Robert Graves

  Links, Fields, Language

  Robert Graves, Patrick J. Quinn (2000). “Some speculations on literature, history, and religion”, Carcanet Press Ltd.

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• If a fish were an anthropologist, the last thing it would discover would be water.

  Margaret Mead

  Water, Would Be, Lasts

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• The anthropologist must relinquish his comfortable position in the long chair on the veranda of the missionary compound, Government station, or planter's bungalow, where, armed with pencil and notebook and at times with a whisky and soda, he has been accustomed to collect statements from informants.... He must go out into the villages, and see the natives at work in gardens, on the beach, in the jungle; he must sail with them to distant sandbanks and to foreign tribes.

  Bronislaw Malinowski

  Notebook, Beach, Garden

  Myth in Primitive Psychology ch. 5 (1926)

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• Not even anthropologists or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can find out all our secrets.

  Rigoberta Menchu

  Book, Secret, Matter

  Rigoberta Menchú (2009). “I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (Second Edition)”, p.289, Verso Books

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• I think of myself as a writer who happens to be doing his writing as an anthropologist

  Clifford Geertz

  Writing, Thinking, Happens

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• The historical development of the work of anthropologists seems to single out clearly a domain of knowledge that heretofore has not been treated by any other science

  Franz Boas

  Historical, Development, Domain

  Franz Boas (1989). “A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911”, p.35, University of Chicago Press

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• Anthropologists say that in every culture in history, children have played the game hide and seek.

  Rob Brezsny

  Children, Games, Culture

  Rob Brezsny (2005). “Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings”, p.88, Frog Books

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• Younger anthropologists have the notion that anthropology is too diverse. The number of things done under the name of anthropology is just infinite; you can do anything and call it anthropology

  Clifford Geertz

  Names, Numbers, Done

  "Clifford Geertz on Ethnography and Social Construction" by Gary A. Olson, Journal of Advanced Composition 11.2, hypergeertz.jku.at. 1991.

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• Every city, every town, every region in USA has these weird things - the way they pronounce words, or what they call soda, or how people drive. It's a huge country, and there's all these strange pockets of behavioral patterns that social anthropologists could spend lifetimes researching and reporting on.

  Michael Schur

  Country, Cities, Usa

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The world of rumor and gossip is like a privileged world with which a social scientist or an anthropologist can take the temperature of popular aspirations.

  James C. Scott

  Gossip, Rumor, World

  "An Interview with James C. Scott | Harry G. West and Celia Plender". Gastronomica Interview, gastronomica.org. March 14, 2017.

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• Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.

  Abraham Verghese

  Baptism, President, Use

  14 Copy quote

• Anarchism and anthropology go well together because anthropologists know that a society without a state is possible because so many exist.

  David Graeber

  Together, States, Anthropology

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