To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self-congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes.

Clifford Geertz

Clifford Geertz

Related Quotes

The point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive.

— Clifford Geertz

AnthropologyCriticismFind

The North African mule talks always of his mother's brother, the horse, but never of his father, the donkey, in favor of others supposedly more reputable.

— Clifford Geertz

AfricanAlwaysBrother

A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

— Clifford Geertz

culturereligionsociety

I'm an inveterate fox and not a hedgehog, so I always think you should try everything.

— Clifford Geertz

AlwaysEverythingFox

Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed.

— Clifford Geertz

ConstructedHistoricallyMeaning