Marvin Harris Quotes

Good questions outrank easy answers.

The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.

Learn to see a problem from a higher level of understanding. Then, it dissolves before your eyes.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed... It doesn't give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

What is philosophy? It is something that lightens up, that makes bright.

My wish for you... is that your skeptic-eclectic brain be flooded with the light of truth.

You can't discover light, by analyzing the dark.

Mathematics is good for the soul, getting things right enlivens a sense of truth, efforts to understand automatically purify desires.

Knowledge is like fire 'cause it breaks down things so you can see what they truly are. It's like how a fire breaks your body down to carbon.

I don't look at a problem and put variables in there that don't affect it.

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

Then I obviously didn't understand what it all meant, but I do now.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

Light is the symbol of truth.

The analysis of concepts is for the understanding nothing more than what the magnifying glass is for sight.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Ultimately, education in its real sense is the pursuit of truth. It is an endless journey through knowledge and enlightenment.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

In complete darkness, it is only knowledge and wisdom that separates us.

Knowledge is love and light and vision.

I don't think ignorance is a way that you gain distance on something.

Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding.

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

An expert knows all the answers - if you ask the right questions.

You can't do anything sensible until you know what the situation is that you're in.