Official education was telling people almost nothing of the nature of all those things on the seashores, and in the redwood forests, in the deserts and in the plains.

Whatever the ups and downs of detail within our limited experience, the larger whole is primarily beautiful.

In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not DNA.

The wise legislator will only rarely initiate a new rule of behaviour; more usually he will confine himself to affirming in law what has already become the custom of the people.

The map is not the territory (coined by Alfred Korzybski), and the name is not the thing named.

It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist.

Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how.