Anthropology Quotes

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

  Ruth Benedict

  Science, Differences, Safety

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  Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

  Margaret Mead

  Inspirational, Life, Friendship

  Margaret Mead, Robert B. Textor (2005). “The World Ahead: An Anthropologist Anticipates the Future”, p.12, Berghahn Books

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• Anthropology is the science which tells us that people are the same the whole world over-except when they are different.

  Nancy Banks-Smith

  Science, People, Different

  52 Copy quote

• Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

  Margaret Mead

  Inspirational, Funny, Inspiring

  225 Copy quote

• Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities.

  Alfred L. Kroeber

  Humanity, Humanistic

  61 Copy quote

• The last thing a fish would ever notice would be water.

  Ralph Linton

  Water, Perception, Would Be

  63 Copy quote

• We can reproduce within our own minds the way that the world is put together for other people. This is the extraordinary privilege and adventure of anthropology.

  Marshall Sahlins

  Adventure, People, Mind

  53 Copy quote

• Cultural anthropology is not valuable because it uncovers the archaic in the psychological sense. It is valuable because it is constantly rediscovering the normal.

  Edward Sapir

  Normal, Psychological, Valuable

  Edward Sapir, David Goodman Mandelbaum (1949). “Selected Writings in Language, Culture and Personality”, p.515, Univ of California Press

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• History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

  W. H. Auden

  History, Answers, Study

  36 Copy quote

• Anthropology provides a scientific basis for dealing with the crucial dilemma of the world today how can peoples of different appearance, mutually unintelligible languages, and dissimilar ways of life get along peaceably together

  Clyde Kluckhohn

  Together, Different, World

  Clyde Kluckhohn (2017). “Mirror for Man: The Relation of Anthropology to Modern Life”, p.29, Routledge

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• Social media is less about technology and more about anthropology, sociology, and ethnography.

  Brian Solis

  Technology, Media, Sociology

  Brian Solis (2011). “Engage!, Revised and Updated: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web”, p.3, John Wiley & Sons

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• I find anthropology is a marvellous discipline to shock me out of my own world into another world.

  John Dominic Crossan

  Discipline, World, Shock

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.

  Gregory Bateson

  Nature, Thinking, Differences

  "Business needs to learn to see separate challenges as part of the whole" by Giles Hutchins, www.theguardian.com. April 5, 2012.

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• The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.

  Paul Broca

  Inspire, Physicians, Assuming

  62 Copy quote

• I have been accused of having believed when I wrote Sex and Temperament that there are no sex differences... This, many readers felt, was too much. It was too pretty. I must have found what I was looking for. But this misconception comes from a lack of understanding of what anthropology means, of the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder, that which one would not have been able to guess.

  Margaret Mead

  Science, Air, Listening

  Preface of Margaret Mead "Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies" (p. 26), 1950 edition.

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• If there were a science of human beings it would be anthropology that aims at understanding the totality of experience through structural context.

  Wilhelm Dilthey

  Understanding, Would Be, Aim

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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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• I chose cultural anthropology, since it offered the greatest opportunity to write high-minded balderdash.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Writing, Opportunity, Palm Sunday

  Kurt Vonnegut (1981). “Palm Sunday: an autobiographical collage”

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• Archaeology is the anthropology of the past, and science fiction is the anthropology of the future.

  Joan D. Vinge

  Past, Fiction, Archaeology

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• It's always amusing to look at how something early in the 20th century was written in anthropology and how it's written now. There's been an enormous shift in how it's done, but yet you can't put your finger on someone who actually did it

  Clifford Geertz

  Looks, Done, Amusing

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• Anthropology never has had a distinct subject matter, and because it doesn't have a real method, there's a great deal of anxiety over what it is

  Clifford Geertz

  Real, Anxiety, Matter

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• The message is that all things are connected. We have animal aspects, anthropological aspects, plant-animal aspects.

  John Dee

  Animal, Connections, Messages

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• I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.

  Margaret Mead

  Truth, Believe, Add

  Quoted in N.Y. Times, 9 Aug. 1964

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• The task of the modern era was the realization and humanization of God – the transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology.

  Ludwig Feuerbach

  Tasks, Realization, Eras

  Ludwig Feuerbach, Manfred H. Vogel (1966). “Principles of the Philosophy of the Future”, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill

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• Archaeology is the only branch of Anthropology where we kill our informants in the process of studying them.

  Kent V. Flannery

  Branches, Study, Process

  14 Copy quote