Pope John Paul II Quotes

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

You couldn't have human society without language.

Man's society is an ecology that forces adaptation to it.

Don't let the culture influence your message, let your message influence the culture.

If there were a science of human beings it would be anthropology that aims at understanding the totality of experience through structural context.

Any theory intended to describe and analyze socio-historical reality cannot restrict itself to the human spirit and disregard the totality of human nature.

Language is possible due to a number of cognitive and physical characteristics that are unique to humans but none of which that are unique to language. Coming together they make language possible. But the fundamental building block of language is community.

I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.

Gossip is essentially storytelling: storytelling about people whom we know.

The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.

We cannot understand our humanity just by studying individuals.

I always had an interest in seeing people within their environments.

When you bring multiple cultures together, there's a degree of push and pull.

I love how humans talk.

When you talk about objects, one other thing automatically comes attached to that thing, and that is gestures: how we manipulate these objects, how we use these objects in everyday life. We use gestures not only to interact with these objects, but we also use them to interact with each other.

Culture is an output of a bunch of inputs that have to come together the right way. Specifically, it is the collision of people and their context, how they interact with each other in that context, and then how that context evolves based on those interactions as they multiply.

I face no problem in communicating with the people of Orissa whom I meet everyday.

All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.

I do want to write about social/cultural/historical context. I'm interested in relationships, in character, but within a specific social context. Which is kind of a political thing, I admit that. But it's what I'm interested in, and it's how I believe human behavior is legible.

All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religion, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs, by imitation.

Human society is inconceivable unless words are to some extent bonds.

A human being is a naturally political [animal].

In the world there is, parallel to the force of death and constraint, an enormous force of persuasion that is called culture.

I take as my fundamental starting point the fundamental distinction between work and interaction

Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.