Anthropologists Quotes

Most anthropologists are doing straightforward ethnography, and should.

Younger anthropologists have the notion that anthropology is too diverse. The number of things done under the name of anthropology is just infinite; you can do anything and call it anthropology.

Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.

The historical development of the work of anthropologists seems to single out clearly a domain of knowledge that heretofore has not been treated by any other science.

Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.