You utter a vow or forge a signature and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman or prison.
Bronislaw MalinowskiCoastal sailing as long as it is perfectly safe and easy commands no magic. Overseas expeditions are invariably bound up with ceremonies and ritual. Man resorts to magic only where chance and circumstances are not fully controlled by knowledge.
Bronislaw MalinowskiFor no sooner had I begun to read this great work [Frasier, The Golden Bough ], than I became immersed in it and enslaved by it. I realized then that anthropology, as presented by Sir James Frazer, is a great science, worthy of as much devotion as any of her elder and more exact sister studies, and I became bound to the service of Frazerian anthropology.
Bronislaw MalinowskiBoth magic and religion are based strictly on mythological tradition, and they also both exist in the atmosphere of the miraculous, in a constant revelation of their wonder-working power. They both are surrounded by taboos and observances which mark off their acts from those of the profane world.
Bronislaw Malinowski