Anthropology Quotes

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

  Ruth Benedict

  Science, Differences, Safety

  111 Copy quote

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

  Alfred L. Kroeber

  Humanity, Humanistic

  62 Copy quote

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

  Margaret Mead

  Inspirational, Funny, Inspiring

  263 Copy quote

• 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

  53 Copy quote
• 

  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

  239 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  54 Copy quote

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

  Ralph Linton

  Water, Perception, Would Be

  65 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

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  W. H. Auden

  History, Answers, Study

  37 Copy quote

• 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.

  123 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.

  Paul Broca

  Inspire, Physicians, Assuming

  63 Copy quote

• 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

  34 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.

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Joan D. Vinge

  Past, Fiction, Archaeology

  10 Copy quote

• Anthropology studies different cultures; mainly primitive, but it doesn't think its own culture is primitive, unfortunately.  There is no field that you can study today that isn't trapped in the culture in some way.  It's hard to escape your culture.

  Jacque Fresco

  Thinking, Different, Culture

  46 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, Anarchism

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• Commitment, belief and positive attitude are all important if you're going to be a success, whether you're in sports, in business or, as in my case, anthropology.

  Donald Johanson

  Sports, Attitude, Commitment

  57 Copy quote

• Every historian has informally an anthropology, without ever using the word.

  Peter Gay

  Historian

  9 Copy quote

• If there's ever a place where you can't argue that you can put the facts over here and the text over there and see if they fit, it is surely in anthropology

  Clifford Geertz

  Facts, Arguing, Fit

  13 Copy quote

• The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.

  David Harvey

  Change, Freedom, Urbanization

  David Harvey (2010). “Social Justice and the City”, p.315, University of Georgia Press

  93 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  25 Copy quote