Western civilization, because of fortuitous historical circumstances, has spread itself more widely than any other local group that has so far been known.

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.

It is strange how long we rebel against a platitude until suddenly in a different lingo it looms up again as the only verity.

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

War is, we have been forced to admit, even in the face of its huge place in our civilization, an asocial trait.

The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.

We do not see the lens through which we look.