Most people are shaped to the form of their culture because of the enormous malleability of their original endowment. They are plastic to the moulding force of the society into which they are born. It does not matter whether, with the Northwest Coast, it requires delusions of self-reference, or with our own civilization the amassing of possessions. In any case the great mass of individuals take quite readily the form that is presented to them.

liberty is the one thing no man can have unless he grants it to others.

The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, it's that there are so many answers.

Racism remains in the eyes of history ... merely another instance of the persecution of minorities for the advantage of those in power.

We must accept all the implications of our human inheritance, one of the most important of which is the small scope of biologically transmitted behavior, and the enormous role of the cultural process of the transmission of tradition.

Culture is not a biologically transmitted complex

The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.