Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's very hard for all of us, when we've committed ourselves to a particular interpretation, to change our minds.
Shakespeare reveals human nature brilliantly: he shines a light on our instinctive desire to dominate each other.
I have found the study of organisms to be a truly exciting experience, always interesting and sometimes humbling.
Public schools are where the next generation of leaders are educated and where cultural exchange will take place.
Where there is dirt there is system. Dirt is the byproduct of a systematic ordering and classification of matter.
I have a huge need for financial security; the emigrant in me has a fear of ending up homeless and in the gutter.
The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.
Nonverbal communication is an elaborate secret code that is written nowhere, known by none, and understood by all.
Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.
Language is an anonymous, collective and unconscious art; the result of the creativity of thousands of generations.
The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.
Researchers have found very little difference between men and women in terms of the amount of time spent gossiping.
it's not until my third cup of coffee that I am fully awake and willing to face the consequences of that condition.
It seems like the first law of Nature is that everybody likes to receive things, but nobody likes to feel grateful.
A healthy dose of guilt never hurt anybody. It's what civilization was built on, guilt. A highly underrated emotion.
The final goal ... is to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world.
Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations.
South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, 'kiss-kiss' and 'bang-bang.
Developing our capacity for compassion makes it possible for us to help others in a more skillful and effective way.
The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting.
If it was so honorable and glorious to be black, why was it the yellow-skinned people among us had so much prestige?
Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is.
What is debt anyway? A debt is just the perversion of a promise. It is a promise corrupted by both math and violence.
He was the average mortal. It troubled him to get used to the world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.
American archaeology has always attracted lots of amateurs ... They were digging up Indian pottery all over the place.
Psychosclerosis: the hardening of the attitude which causes a person to cease dreaming, seeing, thinking, and leading.
Man's natural and inevitable urge to deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes of human evil.
Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing.
Genuine heroism for man is still the power to support contradictions, no matter how glaring or hopeless they may seem.
All of salvation is to make us look good! We who are dirty, worn, broken, and sinful are to be the showcase of heaven.
Without that assured American largesse Israel would have been obliged to come to an accommodation with her neighbours.
What is science but the pursuit of the truth? What is Buddhism but 2500 years of observation as to the nature of mind?
If people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in piety. A chilling thought. Or funny.
As a matter of history great developments in art have often been remarkably separate from religious motivation and use.
If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all.
Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being.
When we have disorderly lives, it makes it difficult for our minds to be orderly and for us to be at ease with disorder.
The price that one pays for refusing to act on the truth as one sees it, is to be led to believe untruth to avoid guilt.
The world is so full of wonderful things we should all, if we were taught how to appreciate it, be far richer than kings.
Enclave life becomes very tense, Even when they do elect a leader, the factions remain, with the threat of splitting off.
It is the mark of the cultured man that he is aware of the fact that equality is an ethical and not a biological principle
You certainly can't tell anything from the microscopic structure of the brain whether the person was an idiot or a genius.
These facts make the creator of music a being like the gods, and make music itself the supreme mystery of human knowledge.
All societies are based on a sort of minimum level of communism. Otherwise, you couldn't have any social relations at all.
Even in the most market-obsessed society, we're still spending half of our time on something other than just getting cash.
Once you base your whole life striving on a desperate lie, and try to implement that lie, you instrument your own undoing.
Some scholars have been arguing that a civilizational clash between organized religions is the next step in human history.
Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me.
The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning.
Debt is the most effective way to take a relation of violent subordination and make the victims feel that it's their fault.