It may be in the cultural particularities of people — in their oddities — that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found.
Clifford GeertzThe point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive.
Clifford GeertzA 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.
Clifford Geertz