FRANZ BOAZ (1858-1942)

"The value of anthropology is its power to impress us with the relative value of all forms of culture, for we are only too liable to consider our civilization the ultimate goal of human evolution, thus depriving ourselves of the benefits to be gained from the teachings of others."

"My whole outlook upon life is determined by one question: how can we recognize the shackles that tradition has laid upon us, for when we can recognize them we are also able to break them."

"The Eskimos are my companions in all my journeys and their fortunes are my fortunes. It was at this time that I learned to know the Eskimo hospitality. I often asked myself what advantages our good society has over that of savages. The more I see of their customs, the more I realize that we have no right to look down on them. For me the most important result of the trip lies in the strengthening of my point of view that the idea of a cultured individual is merely relative, and that a person's worth should be judged by the warmth of his heart."

"The whole basis of the anthropological viewpoint is the willingness to take the position of the nonconformist, not to take anything in our social structure for granted, and to be particularly ready to examine critically all those attitudes that are accompanied by strong outbursts of emotion."

"No people known to us, however hard their lives may be, spent all their time in the acquisition of food and shelter. Even the poorest tribes have produced work that gives them aesthetic pleasure, and those to whom nature has granted freedom from want devote much of their energy to the creation of works of art."

"The value of the museum for popular entertainment must not be underrated, particularly in the large city where every attraction that counteracts the influence of the saloon and of the racetrack is of great social importance."

"Few students have considered it necessary to familiarize themselves sufficiently with native languages to understand directly what the people whom they study speak about. Fewer still have deemed it worthwhile to record the customs and beliefs and traditions of the people in their own words thus giving us objective material that will withstand the scrutiny of painstaking investigation."

"In my opinion, laws of cultural development as rigid as the laws of physics are supposed to be unattainable; absolute laws for phenomena as complex as those of culture are impossible; they will always be reflections of our own culture."

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Last modified on 3.IX.02