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The omelet called “race” has no existence outside the statistical frying- pan in which it has been reduced by the heat of the anthropological imagination.

— Ashley Montagu

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Ashley Montagu, quoted in Chakrabarti, D. K., 1997. Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd. 62-3
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

More by Ashley Montagu

The world is so full of wonderful things we should all, if we were taught how to appreciate it, be far richer than kings.

Among both the Northern and Eastern Hamites are to be found some of the most beautiful types of humanity.

[C]ircumcision, an archaic ritual mutilation that has no justification whatever and no place in a civilized society.

Mutilated Humanity (1991)

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Topics

Imagination

More quotes by Ashley Montagu

The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.

The Eskimos live among ice all their lives but have no single word for ice.

The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health.

The family unit is the institution for the systematic production of mental illness.

And we begin to understand that the goal of life is to die young — as late as possible!

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Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me.

L. Frank Baum Introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)

There is an inverse relationship between imagination and money.

Alan Moore

An active imagination may find a bad tendency arising out of every transaction between imperfect morals.

Edward Hall Alderson Brownlow v. Egerton (1854)

Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.

David Hume A Treatise of Human Nature (1739)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ashley Montagu (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.