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"People keep asking how anthropology is different from sociology, and everybody gets nervous."
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"We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started."

"I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments."

"A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I'm afraid of widths."

"People generally quarrel because they cannot argue."

"How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?"

"I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one."

"I am confident that, in the end, common sense and justice will prevail. I'm an optimist, brought up on the belief that if you wait to the end of the story, you get to see the good people live happily ever after."
Explore more quotes by Clifford Geertz

"I do think the attempt to raise consciousness has succeeded. People are very aware of gender concerns now."

"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 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 had a hard time convincing students that they were going to North Africa to understand the North Africans, not to understand themselves."

"If I remember correctly, a writer is someone who wants to convey information. Language or writing is a code."

"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."

"Has feminism made us all more conscious? I think it has. Feminist critiques of anthropological masculine bias have been quite important, and they have increased my sensitivity to that kind of issue."

"I've often been accused of making anthropology into literature, but anthropology is also field research. Writing is central to it."

"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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