They do not merely collect texts; they must also gather data about the context and the informant and, above all, write an analysis of the items based upon the course readings and lecture material on folklore theory and method.

They do not merely collect texts; they must also gather data about the context and the informant and, above all, write an analysis of the items based upon the course readings and lecture material on folklore theory and method.

Life, it seems, is nothing if not a series of initiations, transitions, and incorporations.

Americans have a penchant for the future and tend to disregard the past.

Americans often have trouble enjoying the present moment.

My academic identity is that of a folklorist, and for many years I have taught only folklore courses.

There is more to folklore research than fieldwork. This is why in all of my other upper-division courses I require a term paper involving original research.

Americans do believe in progress and there is almost certainly a kernel of truth in the joke.

In my introductory course, Anthropology 160, the Forms of Folklore, I try to show the students what the major and minor genres of folklore are, and how they can be analyzed.

If a student takes the whole series of my folklore courses including the graduate seminars, he or she should learn something about fieldwork, something about bibliography, something about how to carry out library research, and something about how to publish that research.

I mentioned that one of the tripartite formulas in American worldview involves time: past, present, and future.

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

The class has become over the years fairly large, running to three hundred or more, but I always insist upon reading all the student folklore collections myself. Although this is a tall order, I look forward to it because I learn so much from it.

Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents.

In the light of our culture, these are not unreasonable questions and tactics, but if once again, we try to see the lens through which we look, we can see that there is far too great an emphasis placed on the future.

Cities all over the world are getting bigger as more and more people move from rural to urban sites, but that has created enormous problems with respect to environmental pollution and the general quality of life.

Future orientation is combined with a notion and expectation of progress, and nothing is impossible.

Polls are frequently taken to try to tease out or determine likely directions and trends, but once taken, they belong to the past, requiring that new polls be taken.

I have a great advantage over many of my colleagues inasmuch as my students bring with them to class their own personal knowledge of national, regional, religious, ethnic, occupational, and family folklore traditions.

Their term project consists of a fieldwork collection of folklore that they create by interviewing family members, friends, or anyone they can manage to persuade to serve as an informant.

Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them.

My theory is if you have a religion, it's a good one. Because some people don't have any at all.

There's a statistical theory that if you gave a million monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the Internet, we now know this isn't true.

My object will be, first, to show by what connections the history of the fossil bones of land animals is linked to the theory of the earth and why they have a particular importance in this respect.

No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.

From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.

Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.

Theory not only formulates what we know but also tells us what we want to know, that is, the questions to which an answer is needed.

The theory of evolution is totally inadequate to explain the origin and manifestation of the inorganic world.

Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.

Being used to scientific terminology and theory it was always natural for me to push this stuff into songs.

They do not merely collect texts; they must also gather data about the context and the informant and, above all, write an analysis of the items based upon the course readings and lecture material on folklore theory and method.

A political theory seeks to find from history the limits of the politically possible.

Land: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.

I have a theory about that, if you have to say something, if you have encourage for one second a prospective acting student - he should not go in to acting.

What has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? Theory concerns him only until he picks up his pen, and it begins to concern him again as soon as he lays it down.

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the experimental proof for the interdependence of the composition and properties of chemical compounds resulted in the theory that they are mutually related, so that like composition governs like properties, and conversely.

Each pursues his own theory, little solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents.

I should point out, however, that at first some difficulty was experienced in observing the phenomena predicted by the theory, owing to the extreme smallness of the variations in the period of oscillation.

By means of microscopic observation and astronomical projection the lotus flower can become the foundation for an entire theory of the universe and an agent whereby we may perceive Truth.

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.

But we did conclude that Ray had actually killed Dr. King pursuant to his theory that he was going to be able to get hold of that money. He had learned of this offer through his ties in the Missouri State Penitentiary.

I joined the Army and was sent to the MIT radiation laboratory after a few months of introduction to electromagnetic wave theory in a special course, given for Army personnel at the University of Chicago.

I wanted a theory that would allow one to live outside the office with the same philosophy one uses inside it.

Whether the ice caps melt, or expand - whatever happens - the anthropogenic global warming theorists claim it confirms their theory. A perfect example of a pseudo-science like astrology.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

I have a theory that the secret of marital happiness is simple: drink in different pubs to your other half.

You know very well that unless you're a scientist, it's much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.

This success led my theoretical group to the chemical reactivity theory, extending more and more widely the range of compound and reactions that were discussed.