Quotes by Women Anthropologists

Jane Goodall

Margaret Mead

Ruth Benedict

Mary Leakey

Kathy Reichs

Mary Douglas

Elsie Clews Parsons

Institutions have the pathetic megalomania of the computer whose whole vision of the world is its own program.

I want to set the example my mother set for me: a strong female role model who faces challenges takes risks and conquers fears. I want my children to know that as women they can do whatever they dream as long as they believe in themselves. More than anything it is my responsibility to instill in my daughters the knowledge that they can have a family and everything else too.

The smell of roasting meat together with that of burning fruit wood and dried herbs, as voluptuous as incense in a church, is enough to turn anyone into a budding gastronome

If the Koran is the soul of Islam, then perhaps the institution of the Muslim family might be described as its body.

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

Fortunately, there is so much underground still. It is a vast place, and there is plenty more under the surface for future generations that are better educated.

Soul food is more than chidins and collard greens, ham hocks and black-eyed peas. Soul food is about a people who have a lot of heart and soul.

Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor

Fallen man is both terrified of vulnerability and committed to maintaining independence.

In every human society of which we know - prehistoric, ancient or modern, whether hunter-gatherer, pastoral, agricultural or industrial - at least some form of art is displayed, and not only displayed, but highly regarded and willingly engaged in.

Ellen Dissanayake

Death is not a self-evident phenomenon. The margins between life and death are socially and culturally constructed, mobile, multiple, and open to dispute and reformulation.

Ultimately, of what possible social significance is it if a person likes to masturbate over a shoe? It may even be non-consensual, but since we do not ask permission of our shoes to wear them, it hardly seems necessary to obtain dispensation to come on them.

Participants in dance, both dancers and viewers, may experience catharsis and develop a sense of mastery or self-discovery.

Judith Lynne Hanna

A lizard maiden Was thirsty and crying. A gila monster ran up And comforted her. The maiden stopped crying. The monster carried her off And took her to wife.

Fear of change is a part of the state of fear man has ever lived in but out of which he has begun to escape. Civilization might be defined indeed as the steps in his escape.

Elsie Clews Parsons

A disgruntled reflection on my own life as a sort of desperate improvisation in which I was constantly trying to make something coherent from conflicting elements to fit rapidly changing settings.

Mary Catherine Bateson

It takes years for average persons in the nagual's world to remove themselves from their involvement with themselves and be capable of seeing the wonder of it all.

Florinda Donner

Witches try to 'connect' with the world around them. Witchcraft, they say, is about the tactile, intuitive understanding of the turn of the seasons, the song of the birds; it is the awareness of all things as holy...

For the heart to truly share another's being, it must be an embodied heart, prepared to encounter directly the embodied heart of another. I have met the other in this way, not once or a few times, but over and over during years spent in the company of persons like you and me, who happen to be nonhuman.

The vanguard of industrial investment in the world capitalist system is in the lowest paid segment of those countries paying the lowest wages. Young women in developing countries are the labor force on this frontier just as women and children were in the industrialization of England and Europe in the nineteenth century. Escaping the patriarchal restrictions of domestic production, young women workers are segregated in the new industrial compounds where they are subject to the patriarchal control of managers.

That "ol' black magic" is a fickle force. The chemistry of romantic love can trigger the chemistry of sexual desire and the fuel of sexual desire can trigger the fuel of romance. This is why it is dangerous to copulate with someone with whom you don't wish to become involved. Although you intend to have casual sex, you might just fall in love.

Helen Fisher (anthropologist)

In the past even scientists have been led to believe that only human beings have thoughts or emotions. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth... After all, thoughts and emotions have evolutionary value.

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

Everyone's gone mad, typing to themselves all day long like mindless robots.

Whether or not enlightenment is possible at the moment of death, the practices that prepare one for this possibility also bring one closer to the bone of life.

Soul is the ability to feel oneness with all black people.

Johnnetta B. Cole

And I thought how sad it was that, for all our sophisticated intellect, for all our noble aspirations, our aggressive behavior was not just similar in many ways to that of the chimpanzees - it was even worse. Worse because human beings have the potential to rise above their baser instincts, whereas chimpanzees probably do not.

In the presence of grandparent and grandchild, past and future merge in the present.