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"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."
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Explore more quotes by Steven Pinker
"By exploring the political and moral colorings of discoveries about what makes us tick, we can have a more honest science and a less fearful intellectual milieu."
"Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language."
"But the newest research is showing that many properties of the brain are genetically organized, and don't depend on information coming in from the senses."
"I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor."
"Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications of the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that the brain is organized in part by the genome, and that the genome was shaped by natural selection?"
"Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?"
"So no, it's not all in the genes, but what isn't in the genes isn't in the family environment either. It can't be explained in terms of the overall personalities or the child-rearing practices of parents."
"As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones."
Exlpore more Anthropology quotes
"The point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive."
"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."
"He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."
"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."
"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."
"I've often been accused of making anthropology into literature, but anthropology is also field research. Writing is central to it."
"Anthropology demands 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."
"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."
"Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities."
"Men were primitive in the eyes of angel beingsas men are primitive in the eyes of wilier races."
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