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"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."
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"It is not as if farming brought a great improvement in living standards either. A typical hunter-gatherer enjoyed a more varied diet and consumed more protein and calories than settled people, and took in five times as much viatmin C as the average person today."
"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."
"Man is at the bottom an animal midway a citizen and at the top divine. But the climate of this world is such that few ripen at the top."
"One-on-one revenge was common in foraging societies, and kin-against-kin blood feuds were common in tribal societies that had not been pacified by a colonial or national government, particularly if they had an exaggerated culture of manly honor."
"He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."
"Human cultures vary widely in the plants they use to gratify the desire for a change of mind, but all cultures (save the Eskimo) sanction at least one such plant and, just as invariably, strenuously forbid certain others. Along with the temptation seems to come the taboo."
"Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities."
"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."
"Men were primitive in the eyes of angel beingsas men are primitive in the eyes of wilier races."
"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."
Explore more quotes by Clifford Geertz
"I do think the attempt to raise consciousness has succeeded. People are very aware of gender concerns now."
"I think the perception of there being a deep gulf between science and the humanities is false."
"We need to think more about the nature of rhetoric in anthropology. There isn't a body of knowledge and thought to fall back on in this regard."
"I'm writing a review of three books on feminism and science, and it's about social constructionism. So I would say I'm a social constructionist, whatever that means."
"My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things."
"I was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things."
"Two people have been really liberating in my mind; one is Wittgenstein and the other is Burke. I read Burke before he was a secular saint, before everyone was reading him."
"I don't feel that an atmosphere of debate and total disagreement and argument is such a bad thing. It makes for a vital and alive field."
"The North African mule talks always of his mother's brother, the horse, but never of his father, the donkey, in favor of others supposedly more reputable."
"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."
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