A man’s indebtedness is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedicates himself actively to the job of gratitude.
The Japanese are, to the highest degree, both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways.
War is an old, old plant on this earth, and a natural history of it would have to tell us under what soil conditions it grows, where it plays havoc, and how it is eliminated.
As a matter of history great developments in art have often been remarkably separate from religious motivation and use.
The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community.
I have always used the world of make-believe with a certain desperation.
Man is not committed in detail by his biological constitution to any particular variety of behavior.
Western civilization, because of fortuitous historical circumstances, has spread itself more widely than any other local group that has so far been known.
I haven’t strength of mind not to need a career.
In world history, those who have helped to build the same culture are not necessarily of one race, and those of the same race have not all participated in one culture.
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.
The arrogance of race prejudice is an arrogance which defies what is scientifically known of human races.
We do not see the lens through which we look.
It is strange how long we rebel against a platitude until suddenly in a different lingo it looms up again as the only verity.
Culture, with its processes and functions, is a subject upon which we need all the enlightenment we can achieve, and there is no direction in which we can seek with greater reward than in the facts of pre-literate societies.
In a day of footloose movements of people and of mixed marriages in the ancestry of the most desirable elements of the community we preach unabashed the gospel of the pure race.
We must accept all the implications of our human inheritance, one of the most important of which is the small scope of biologically transmitted behavior, and the enormous role of the cultural process of the transmission of tradition.
In a world that holds books and babies and canyon trails, why should one condemn oneself to live day-in, day-out with people one does not like, and sell oneself to chaperone and correct them?
It is my necessary breath of life to understand and expression is the only justification of life that I can feel without prodding.
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 accomodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior.