Wisdom Quotes

"To understand a culture, examine what it considers dangerous or unclean."

"What we reject reveals what we value most deeply."

"Every system of order produces its own disorder and its own waste."

"Every culture must define the boundaries of the acceptable and the unacceptable."

"What we call progress is often the displacement of problems from one location to another."

"What we call natural is the accumulated result of social labor and cultural choice."

"The map is not the territory."

"The difference that makes a difference is the smallest unit of meaning."

"Wisdom is the acceptance of complexity."

"The question is not 'what is the answer' but 'what is the pattern'."

"The young mind is not yet ready to take all knowledge into itself, as the adult mind claims it can do."

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

"As the Balinese say, we do not feel angry at him, we feel angry at the situation."

"I give advice only when asked and rarely then."

"The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

"The anthropologist's task is to understand not judge, to describe not prescribe, to illuminate the human condition in all its diversity."

"Every culture is rational within its own context and frame of reference."

"Myth is not falsehood; it is truth expressed in a different language."

"Understanding another culture requires the death of certainty."

"Every custom, no matter how strange, answers a human need or serves a human purpose."

"The researcher must approach each culture with respect and humility, for wisdom dwells everywhere."

"The outsider who truly listens becomes an insider in ways he never expected."

"In another person's culture lies a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected."

"The myth speaks a truth that facts alone can never capture."

"Culture is the accumulated solutions to the problems of human existence."

"The anthropologist who judges has already ceased to understand."

"To understand another is to be enlarged, to have one's world made larger and richer."

"Culture provides the grammar of human behavior; without it, we speak no language at all."

"What appears rational in one context appears irrational in another; context is all."

"Sacred time suspends the normal flow of existence; it opens doors that ordinary hours keep closed."