Franz Boas Quotes

Genes cannot tell us how to catalogue or comprehend human diversity. Environments can, cultures can, geographies can, histories can.

I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a species. In other words, I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research.

There are three classes of men; the retrograde, the stationary and the progressive.

No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them; and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure.

It is impossible to say with any certainty to which human race we belong. We all differ visibly in the color of our skin.

Society is not homogeneous, and those who do not deliberately close their eyes have to recognize that men differ greatly from one another from the physical, moral, and intellectual viewpoints.

Fortunately, human beings are remarkably diverse models to work from.

Nonetheless, much has been learned by studying the statistical differences between the various human races.

When I was 24 I went to Nigeria and it was such a culture shock, growing up in Australia and suddenly being the only white man in this unit full of black men.

Istanbul is a vast place. There are very conservative neighbourhoods, there are places that are upper class, Westernised, consuming Western culture.

How rich our German life is compared to France or England: what an abundance of social types and customs with completely different origins... Germany is a world, whereas England and France, with their stereotypically divided three social classes, are but enlarged villages... what a stage for a Balzac.

The characters in 'Be Near Me' come from a genuine place, a Britain that is more than one country and more than one ideal.

You cannot look at a person's genes and say with any accuracy whether they are from one racial group or another.

So, Mexico, Brazil, they wanted their national culture to be 'blackish' - really brown, a beautiful brown blend. And finally, I discovered that in each of these societies the people at the bottom are the darkest skinned with the most African features.

Different races never fazed me because coming from Bethnal Green, I'd been around people of different races forever. Different class? That was much harder.

The moral and intellectual character of the Africans is widely different in different nations.

I think there are profound differences between women and men. In intelligence and creativity, there is no difference, but in what one loves, what one likes, the passions - there are differences.

It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.

It's interesting to see how we are all uniquely different.

I'm not a representative of Pakistan; I'm just an example that Pakistanis are different from each other. I believe it in my fiction and I believe it personally.

Men are weak now, and yet they transform the Earth's surface. In millions of years, their might will increase to the extent that they will change the surface of the Earth, its oceans, the atmosphere, and themselves.

Thus the races, though alike in their physical response to climate, may possibly be different in their mental response because they have approached America by different paths.

I really love New York, and I've lived here for a long time. I know not just the different neighborhoods but the different kind of class cultures in New York from the up-and-coming, down-and-out kind of artist to the powerful worlds of finance.

Man differs more from Man, than Man from Beast.

See, I believe that it is not true that different races and nations are alike. I'm profoundly convinced that that's a total lie. I think people are different. Sardinians, for example, have stubby little fingers. Bosnians have short necks.