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Cultural anthropology is not valuable because it uncovers the archaic in the psychological sense. It is valuable because it is constantly rediscovering the normal.

— Edward Sapir Cultural Anthropology and Psychiatry (1932)

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More quotes by Edward Sapir

Fashion is custom in the guise of departure from custom.

Fashion (1931)

Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.

Language (1921)

It would be naïve to imagine that any analysis of experience is dependent on pattern expressed in language.

Getting down to brass tacks, how in the Hell are you going to explain general American n- 'I' except genetically?

Human beings do not wish to be modest; they want to be as expressive — that is, as immodest — as fear allows; fashion helps them solve that paradoxical problem.

Fashion (1931)

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