Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.

The way in which mathematicians and physicists and historians talk is quite different, and what a physicist means by physical intuition and what a mathematician means by beauty or elegance are things worth thinking about.

I had a hard time convincing students that they were going to North Africa to understand the North Africans, not to understand themselves.

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.

I don't think things are moving toward an omega point; I think they're moving toward more diversity

My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things

The North African mule talks always of his mother's brother, the horse, but never of his father, the donkey, in favor of others supposedly more reputable.