Social Anthropology Quotes

Therefore, we must not look at the African people, even before they met whites, as if they had something unique, which was not to be found in other societies.

I wanted to be an anthropologist and travel.

I was taught in my Introduction to Anthropology [course in college], it is not just the great works of [hu]mankind that make a culture. It is the daily things, like what people eat and how they serve it.

I've always been fascinated by Japanese culture.

Hold the mirror up to nature. Human behavior is worthy of examination and celebration.

Primitive societies without religion have never been found.

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.

I am fundamentally an anthropologist and a rationalist. What I say is that human societies are very different from what specialists call 'animal society' because the former have religion.

Well, we are terribly divided politically, yes, and, you know, I don't mean to intimidate you and your listeners but I have a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago.

I like to use exercise classes as a way of understanding what people are doing. I'm promiscuous in terms of exercise. You see what people are wearing. You see what people are responding to. You see what the music is they're listening to. An exercise class is social anthropology: what clothes people are wearing, what are the new sneakers.

The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.

The human animal varies from class to class, culture to culture. In one way we are consistent: We are irrational.

There is probably no oral society that fails to mark the spatial distinction of left and right, peculiar as this distinction may be.

For me, a bit of anthropology in the evening is always better than staying and watching the telly.

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

If you want to learn about a culture, you look at what buildings the people lived in but you also want to know about their cosmos.

Economics precedes religion; worship grew out of eating, not the other way around.

I have no idea if some societies, anthropologically speaking, aren't really suited for democracy. I don't think that's true.

I love to kind of people watch; that's part of what I do as an actor and creative person and sort of step back and watch others.

Every city, every town, every region in USA has these weird things - the way they pronounce words, or what they call soda, or how people drive. It's a huge country, and there's all these strange pockets of behavioral patterns that social anthropologists could spend lifetimes researching and reporting on.

I wasn't a big fan of social anthropology. And, luckily, that created room for me to work in visual arts because I sort of ignored my requirements. I think I was attracted to social anthropology because I liked to travel and was always interested in far-off places.