47 quotes
Cotton Mather was grateful to the Lord that "on this day we have sent six hundred heathen souls to hell."
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
The Whites were determined to fight it out with each other—down to the last Indian.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Thinking is language spoken to oneself. Until language has made sense of an experience, that experience is meaningless.
Word Play (1974)
The debate as to where "magic" ends and "religion" begins is an old one, and it appeared to have been settled some decades ago when scholars concluded that no discernible boundary was to be found.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Whorf's brilliant analysis... seemed to support the view that man is a prisoner of his language.
Word Play (1974)
Time is said to be wasted or saved... their economic systems emphasize wages paid for the amount of time worked, rent for the time a dwelling is occupied, interest for the time money is loaned.
Word Play (1974)
The Shoshone did not wage war, because it served no purpose.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
At the time of the Europeans discovery of North America, the American Indians already cultivated a wider variety of plants than did the Europeans.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
The most imposing characteristic of the Mississipian is the pyramidal mound, built not to cover a burial but as a foundation for a temple or a chief's house.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
When today's remnants of Indian societies are examined closely, it is seen how well some have worked out a compromise with their White conquerors—acculturation without assimilation.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
A central assumption of this book has been that to examine the experience of humans throughout their 25,000 years on this continent is to hold up a mirror to the culture of Modern America.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
To do nothing now is to let our children lament that they never knew the magnificent diversity of humankind because our generation let disappear those cultures that might have taught it to them.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Wilhelm von Humboldt... stated that the structure of language expresses the inner life of its speakers: "Man lives with the world about him, principally, indeed exclusively, as language presents it."
Word Play (1974)
A human being cannot survive alone and be entirely human. It is through the nature of their social and political institutions that the differences and similarities among cultures are to be accounted for.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Experiments... have shown that at least one aspect of human thought—memory—is strongly influenced by language.
Word Play (1974)
Complex civilization is hectic... such hunters and collectors of wild food as the Shoshone are among the most leisured people on earth.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Perhaps we, who for so long regarded ourselves as bringers of light to the shadowy recesses of North America, will finally admit that there is much about which the Indians can illuminate us.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
As this cultural inadequacy becomes apparent even to the most conservative of its members, the culture may deteriorate to such an extent that it literally dies.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
By the seventeenth century, observers had reached the firm conclusion that American Indians were in no way inferior to Whites, and many writers took special pains to salute the Noble Red Man.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
The astonishing cluster of them [geniuses] that appeared in Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. ...what changed was the culture, which allowed exceptional minds to flourish.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)