If I remember correctly, a writer is someone who wants to convey information. Language or writing is a code
Clifford GeertzOne of the most significant facts about humanity may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to a live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one
Clifford GeertzIt may be in the cultural particularities of people โ in their oddities โ that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found.
Clifford GeertzI don't think things are moving toward an omega point; I think they're moving toward more diversity
Clifford GeertzThere is an Indian story -- at least I heard it as an Indian story -- about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? 'Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down
Clifford Geertz