Anthropologist

Explore 6 quotes by Anthropologists

The world began without the human race and it will end without it... Man has never-save only when he reproduces himself-done other than cheerfully dismantle millions upon millions of structures and reduce their elements to a state in which they can no longer be reintegrated.

Claude Levi-Strauss

Tristes Tropiques

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More information about this quote

Topic

Human destructiveness

Author

Claude Levi-Strauss

Source

Tristes Tropiques

Genre

Autobiography and memoir

Language

French

Time

1955 1950s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Levi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques [Sad Tropics]. Librairie Plon, 1955, pt. 9, ch. 36.

Current Citation

Levi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques, translated by John and Doreen Weightman. Penguin Classics, 2012, pt. 9, ch. 36.

Democracy is the worst form of government. It is the most inefficient, the most clumsy, the most unpractical... It reduces wisdom to impotence and secures the triumph of folly, ignorance, claptrap, and demagogy... Yet democracy is the only form of social order that is admissible, because it is the only one consistent with justice.

Robert Briffault

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Topic

Critique of democracy Democracy

Author

Robert Briffault

Source

Rational Evolution (The Making of Humanity)

Language

English

Time

1930 1930s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Briffault, Robert. The Making of Humanity. London: G. Allen & Unwin Limited.

Current Citation

Briffault, Robert. Rational Evolution (The Making of Humanity). Routledge, 2019, ch. 15.

There is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture.

Clifford Geertz

More information about this quote

Topic

Human nature Culture

Author

Clifford Geertz

Language

English

Time

1973 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Geertz, Clifford. "The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man." The Monday Lectures. 1965, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.

South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, "kiss-kiss" and "bang-bang."

Hortense Powdermaker

More information about this quote

Topic

Hollywood American culture

Author

Hortense Powdermaker

Language

English

Time

1950 1950s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Powdermaker, Hortense. Hollywood, the Dream Factory: An Anthropologist Looks at the Movie-Makers. Little, Brown and Company, 1950, introduction.

The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.

Ruth Benedict

Patterns of Culture

More information about this quote

Topic

Custom and convention Formation of character

Author

Ruth Benedict

Source

Patterns of Culture

Genre

Anthropology

Language

English

Time

1934 1930s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Benedict, Ruth. Patterns of Culture. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1934, ch. 1.

Were a language ever completely "grammatical," it would be a perfect engine of conceptual expression. Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.

Edward Sapir

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Topic

Language

Author

Edward Sapir

Language

English

Time

1921 1920s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Sapir, Edward. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1921, ch. 2.