Franz Boas Quotes

The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.

Cultural comparisons are good because they can tell you about what's similar, but also sometimes they make it easier to see obvious differences.

It's Australian to do such things because, however uncivilised they may seem, it's human to do them.

Anthropology is the science which tells us that people are the same the whole world over - except when they are different.

People are very complex. And for a psychologist, you get fascinated by the complexity of human beings, and that is what I have lived with, you know, in my career all of my life, is the complexity of human beings.

Perhaps the most mysterious of all mammals is the male Homo sapiens. Indeed, many anthropologists classify the group as a subspecies.

I would love to study cultures and people.

We are somehow natured, not just to reproduce, but for sociality and even for culture.

You need to figure out other societies, where they came from, what the people believe in, what they do, how their ethnic divisions work, which is often very different from our own; then design your policies around that. Pay attention. I think that's the simple answer, which is just to realize that not everybody is like the United States. Whether you study history or sociology, or anthropology, journalism, there's room for seeing there are other cultures and other ways and other structures.

Homo Sapiens

My father is German; my mother is African-American. Growing up, I visited my grandparents in Berlin a lot. I would not see any other person of color for three weeks. People would stare. They would say things like, 'Oh, you look like chocolate - I want to eat you up!'

In the past 20 years scientists from very diverse disciplines - anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, psychologists - have all moved to a much more hopeful, optimistic view of human nature.

In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider it is hard to find rules without exception.

Cultural anthropology is not valuable because it uncovers the archaic in the psychological sense. It is valuable because it is constantly rediscovering the normal.

The proper study of Mankind is Everything.

The underlying assumption that human nature is basically the same at all times, everywhere, and obeys eternal laws beyond human control, is a conception that only a handful of bold thinkers have dared to question.

One of the best things about humans is we recognize patterns, so we get things like science, music, philosophy. One of the worst things is that we see patterns that are not there so we get things like racism, homophobia and Jerry Falwell.

I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time, they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still.

As a social anthropologist, I naturally accept and even stress the fact that there are major differences, both mental and psychological, which separate the different races of mankind. Indeed, I would be inclined to suggest that however great may be the physical differences between such races as the European and the Negro, the mental and psychological differences are greater still.

in all cultures, human beings - in order to be human - must understand the nonhuman.

Is it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won't be for another thousand years?

Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different.

[Cultural relativism] licenses the envy of the untalented, giving rise to what has been called the revenge of failure: Those who cannot paint destroy the canons of painting; those who cannot write reject canonical literature.

Barbarism is the natural state of mankind.

Perhaps because I'll never be one, humans are interesting to me.