The North African mule talks always of his mother's brother, the horse, but never of his father, the donkey, in favor of others supposedly more reputable.

I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done.

People keep asking how anthropology is different from sociology, and everybody gets nervous.

I've written a lot of books which are written from the moon - the view from nowhere.

Anthropology never has had a distinct subject matter, and because it doesn't have a real method, there's a great deal of anxiety over what it is.

Younger anthropologists have the notion that anthropology is too diverse. The number of things done under the name of anthropology is just infinite; you can do anything and call it anthropology.

I never leave a sentence or a paragraph until I'm satisfied with it.

I don't think things are moving toward an omega point; I think they're moving toward more diversity.

Two people have been really liberating in my mind; one is Wittgenstein and the other is Burke. I read Burke before he was a secular saint, before everyone was reading him.

I don't have the notion that everybody has to write in some single academic style.

I don't feel that an atmosphere of debate and total disagreement and argument is such a bad thing. It makes for a vital and alive field.

Anthropology in general has always been fairly hospitable to female scholars, and even to feminist scholars.

Most anthropologists are doing straightforward ethnography, and should.

My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things.

Has feminism made us all more conscious? I think it has. Feminist critiques of anthropological masculine bias have been quite important, and they have increased my sensitivity to that kind of issue.

I've often been accused of making anthropology into literature, but anthropology is also field research. Writing is central to it.

I think feminism has had a major impact on anthropology.

I'm an inveterate fox and not a hedgehog, so I always think you should try everything.

If I remember correctly, a writer is someone who wants to convey information. Language or writing is a code.

Gender consciousness has become involved in almost every intellectual field: history, literature, science, anthropology. There's been an extraordinary advance.

Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed.

We're getting closer to our nature.

It's always amusing to look at how something early in the 20th century was written in anthropology and how it's written now. There's been an enormous shift in how it's done, but yet you can't put your finger on someone who actually did it.

I was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things.

I think what's known about neurology is still scattered and uncertain.

I think the American university system still seems to be the best system in the world.

The North African mule talks always of his mother's brother, the horse, but never of his father, the donkey, in favor of others supposedly more reputable.

I think of myself as a writer who happens to be doing his writing as an anthropologist.

I agree with Chomsky in almost nothing. When it comes to innate structures and so on, I'm very skeptical.

If there's ever a place where you can't argue that you can put the facts over here and the text over there and see if they fit, it is surely in anthropology.

The way in which mathematicians and physicists and historians talk is quite different, and what a physicist means by physical intuition and what a mathematician means by beauty or elegance are things worth thinking about.

I'm writing a review of three books on feminism and science, and it's about social constructionism. So I would say I'm a social constructionist, whatever that means.

I do think the attempt to raise consciousness has succeeded. People are very aware of gender concerns now.

I had a hard time convincing students that they were going to North Africa to understand the North Africans, not to understand themselves.

We need to think more about the nature of rhetoric in anthropology. There isn't a body of knowledge and thought to fall back on in this regard.

I think the perception of there being a deep gulf between science and the humanities is false.

The point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive.

Gender consciousness has become involved in almost every intellectual field history literature science anthropology. Theres been an extraordinary advance.

To be a slaveholder meant one had to regard the African American as inferior in every way.

There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is.

Without Social Security, poverty rates for African American seniors would more than double.

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

It is up to African leaders to show their will and political courage in order to assure that this new pan-African institution becomes an efficient instrument and not a place for endless discussions.

Because I don't play guitar any more, African harmonies and rhythms have been an inspiration to me. I love the raw origin of the sound. It complements my voice and words naturally.

I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.

I have a very personal interest. I am a Miami-Dade voter. One of the issues is that my vote and so many other votes of women and African Americans in Florida are being discounted or discarded. I want my vote to count.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, have played an important role in enriching the lives of not just African Americans, but our entire country.

When I became a director, I wanted to convince a very reluctant Sidney into allowing me to go on the journey of his life. Sidney had gone ahead of every other African American actor.

I think one of the political problems we have in this country is the perspective that all soccer moms think alike, all African-Americans think alike.