Men have always been afraid that women could get along without them.
In the presence of grandparent and grandchild, past and future merge in the present.
The way to do fieldwork is never to come up for air until it is all over.
The contempt for law and the contempt for the human consequences of lawbreaking go from the bottom to the top of American society.
The important thing about women today is, as they get older, they still keep house. It’s one reason why they don’t die, but men die when they retire. Women just polish the teacups.
The Samoan puts the burden of amatory success upon the man and believes that women need more initiating, more time for maturing of sexual feeling. A man who fails to satisfy a woman is looked upon as a clumsy, inept blunderer.
Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump: you have to get it right the first time.
In almost any society I think, the quality of the nonconformists is likely to be just as good as and no better than that of the conformists.
Jealousy is not a barometer by which the depth of love can be read. It merely records the degree of the lover’s insecurity.
No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.
If the future is to remain open and free, we need people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of completely worked out systems or traditional blueprints from the past.
Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.
In this country, some people start being miserable about growing old while they are still young.
To the extent a person makes, invents or thinks something that is new to him, he may be said to have performed a creative act.
It was not until we saw the picture of the earth, from the moon, that we realized how small and how helpless this planet is – something that we must hold in our arms and care for.
The negative cautions of science are never popular.
We will be a better country when each religious group can trust its members to obey the dictates of their own religious faith without assistance from the legal structure of the country.
Because of their age long training in human relations for that is what feminine intuition really is women have a special contribution to make any group enterprise.
The liberals have not softened their view of actuality to make themselves live closer to the dream, but instead sharpen their perceptions and fight to make the dream actuality...
The closest friends I made all through life have been people who also grew up close to a loved and loving grandmother or grandfather.