Anthropology Quotes

“:Category:Anthropologists”

“Anthropology is not social work.”

“anthropology”

“Wikipedia: Anthropology”

“The last bastions of resistance to evolutionary theory are organized religion and cultural anthropology.”

“Anthropology is never an exact science; the observer never experiences the same culture as the participant.”

“On Earth, when anthropologists can’t find instant meaning in any cultural artifact, they say, “This obviously had deep religious significance.””

“Anthropology is destined to revolutionise the political and the social sciences as radically as bacteriology has revolutionised the science of medicine.”

“Teaching and research are not to be confused with training for a profession. Their greatness and their misfortune is that they are a refuge or a mission.”

“Before we can apply the tools of anthropology to reconstruct the real history of money, we need to understand what's wrong with the conventional account.”

“Culture and Cognitive Science entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy”

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

“Adventure has no place in the anthropologists profession; it is merely one of those unavoidable drawbacks, which detract from his effective work through the incidental loss of weeks or months”

“Both social and biosocial factors are necessary to interpret crosscultural studies, with the general proviso that one's research interest determines which elements, in what combinations, are significant for the provision of understanding.”

“The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.”

“Among the various forms of science which are reaching and affecting the new popular tradition, we have reckoned Anthropology. Pleasantly enough, Anthropology has herself but recently emerged from that limbo of the unrecognised in which Psychical Research is pining.”

“To know that a human being truly is, he must be examined in the arena where he most fully realizes his nature, thus where he is most truly himself. Excellence (arete) is the object of ethics. Anthropology is therefore inseparable from ethics.”

“Anthropology has reached that point of development where the careful investigation of facts shakes our firm belief in the far-reaching theories that have been built up. The complexity of each phenomenon dawns on our minds, and makes us desirous of proceeding more cautiously. Heretofore we have seen the features common to all human thought”

“For Immanuel Kant, the term anthropology embraced all the human sciences, and laid the foundation of familiar knowledge we need, to build solidly grounded ideas about the moral and political demands of human life. Margaret Mead saw mid-twentieth-century anthropology as engaged in a project no less ambitious than Kant's own, and her Terry Lectures on Continuities in Cultural Evolution provide an excellent point to enter into her reflections.”

“Comparative anthropology has clearly shown that peace becomes sustainable and effective when societies establish mechanisms of reciprocity, dialogue, and understanding to process their conflicts. It’s not just about avoiding open confrontations but building trust in fair treatment and a sense of shared community. These conditions are essential for abolishing multiple forms of violence and ultimately reveal that justice is the indispensable foundation of all lasting peace: without justice, there is no absence of violence, and without the absence of violence, there can be no true peace.”