Society in its full sense ... is never an entity separable from the individuals who compose it. No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilization has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual.

Racism is the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to congenital inferiority and another group is destined to congenital superiority.

I gambled on having the strength to live two lives, one for myself and one for the world.

The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.

The adequate study of culture, our own and those on the opposite side of the globe, can press on to fulfillment only as we learn today from the humanities as well as from the scientists.

We do not see the lens through which we look.

The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community