Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.

I think the perception of there being a deep gulf between science and the humanities is false

I think what's known about neurology is still scattered and uncertain

What we call our data are really our own constructions of other people’s constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to.

A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

A scholar can hardly be better employed than in destroying a fear.

Learning to exist in a world quite different from that which formed you is the condition, these days, of pursuing research you can on balance believe in and write sentences you can more or less live with.