Franz Boas Quotes

That bad manners are so prevalent in the world is the fault of good manners.

Good manners require space and time.

For as laws are necessary that good manners be preserved, so there is need of good manners that law may be maintained.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

We must watch over our modesty in the presence of those who cannot understand its grounds.

At the descriptive level, certainly, you would expect different cultures to develop different sorts of ethics and obviously they have; that doesn't mean that you can't think of overarching ethical principles you would want people to follow in all kinds of places.

There must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. On this view, some people and cultures will be right (to a greater or lesser degree), and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life.

I don't know why they gave me a knighthood - though it's very nice of them - but I only ever use the title in the U.S. The Americans insist on it and get offended if I don't.

I am in the habit, like most British people, of holding the door open for people. But in the U.S., people don't understand it. You get odd looks or doors slammed in your face.

The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.

People in England have a lot of respect. It is relaxed here.

It's one of these things that I've been struck by for so long about America. You know, this amazing politeness of American life that's not at all class specific. It's not like people get more polite as ascend the hierarchy of society. Just incredible good manners. It's always been something that I've noticed.

I was brought up in a community, in a family that valued such things as good manners, and I still do.

True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

The highest virtue here may be least in another world.

Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage.

Our manners, our civilization, and all the good things connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.

Good manners, to those one does not love, are no more a breach of truth, than "your humble servant," at the bottom of a challengeis; they are universally agreed upon, and understand to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown,--or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws.

...discussing cultural relativism with cultural relativists is like playing tennis with some guy who says, "Your ace is just a social construct.

I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either. I would as soon do the one as the other sort of thing--it is all a matter of harmony and good taste.

Association with women is the basis of good manners.

Good manners are the techniques of expressing consideration for the feelings of others.