Quotations

«Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities.»

«Anthropology provides a scientific basis for dealing with the crucial dilemma of the world today: how can peoples of different appearance... and dissimilar ways of life get along peaceably together?»

«The story the Leavers have been enacting for the past three million years isn?t a story of conquest and rule. Enacting it doesn?t give them power. Enacting it gives them lives that are satisfying and meaningful to them. This is what you?ll find if you go among them. They?re not seething with discontent and rebellion, not incessantly wrangling over what should be allowed and what forbidden, not forever accusing each other of not living the right way, not living in terror of each other not going crazy because their lives seem empty and pointless, not having to stupefy themselves with drugs to get through the days, not having a new religion every week to give them something to hold on to, not forever searching for something to do or something to believe in that will make lives worth living. And ? I repeat ? this is not because they live close to nature or have no formal government or because they?re innately noble. This is simply because they?re enacting a story that works well for people ? a story that worked well for three million years and that still works well where the Takers haven?t yet managed to stamp it out.»

«Anthropology was the science that gave her the platform from which she surveyed, scolded and beamed at the world.»

«Anthropology is the only discipline that can access evidence about the entire human experience on this planet.»

«The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.»

«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.»