Sahlins Quotes & Sayings

going up. It's gaining height." "Jake, I'm so sorry. This is the end. We are going to die here." She looked at him with huge black eyes, sad eyes. "No, I don't think we are. It really is going up." Other people had begun to murmur and whisper around them. As the rock grew nearer, it became clear that it was indeed increasing in altitude. There was no denying it. — Harry Dayle

One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of the greatest technical power, is starvation an institution. Reverse another venerable formula: the amount of hunger increases relatively and absolutely with the evolution of culture. — Marshall Sahlins

When we enlarge our view of the world, we deepen our understanding of our own lives. — Yo-Yo Ma

I had a bartender friend once tell me about a $14.00 shot of vodka, this was years ago it's probably more now. I thought that was crazy. From what I understand, vodka has no taste. I think people like the taste of their money. — Ian MacKaye

We are inclined to think of hunters and gatherers as poor because they don't have anything; perhaps better to think of them for that reason as free. — Marshall Sahlins

We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self interest. — Dean Koontz

We can reproduce within our own minds the way that the world is put together for other people. This is the extraordinary privilege and adventure of anthropology. — Marshall Sahlins

The world's most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization. — Marshall Sahlins

When you leave, I feel like I'm alone with your demons. — Crystal Woods

Gifts make friends and friends make gifts. — Marshall Sahlins

Improvisation is not a presentational form, except in small doses, or as a game. It's a tool. — Bernard Sahlins

I am not the first to suggest that anthropology arose in Western thought in an inauspicious period, one characterized by colonialism and so-called racial science. But I seem to be more or less alone in my conviction that, in all its primitivity, this anthropology continues to color the ways in which we conceive of human nature. — Marilynne Robinson

I'm a bug on acting, which distinguishes Second City from a lot of other revues. It comes from the character, the behavior, and not from the jokes. I don't think jokes are funny. Humor comes out of character and out of situations the character is in. — Bernard Sahlins

If you're talking down to the audience, no matter how brutish it is, they know it and they hate you for it. — Bernard Sahlins

We don't think of ourselves as "prayer warriors." A man must've come up with that term - men think anything difficult is war. But prayer is more delicate than battle, especially intercessory prayer. More than just a notion, taking up the burdens of someone else, often someone you don't even know. You close your eyes and listen to a request. Then you have to slip inside their body. You are Tracy Robinson, burning for whiskey. You are Cindy Harris's husband, searching your wife's phone. You are Earl Vernon, washing dirty knots out of your strung-out daughter's hair. If you don't become them, even for a second, a prayer is nothing but words. That's — Brit Bennett

I'm an adrenaline junkie. I love climbing crazy trees or cliffs, which doesn't make my mom very happy. — Stephen Colletti

Actually being funny is mostly telling the truth about things. — Bernard Sahlins

I think improvisation is a technique and a tool. I think that even the best of them fail most of the time, and in the end, the audience is not interested in how you got there but in what you're saying. The more clearly and concisely and artistically you say it, the more effective it is. — Bernard Sahlins

My theory is that everything an actor does, from the way he looks at his watch to the way he moves across the stage, is in the service of advancing a story, and in that sense, it's all writing. In that sense we, while acting, write. — Bernard Sahlins

Nobody likes to be tapped on the knee. Practically nobody likes to be tapped anywhere. — Lemony Snicket

Modernity sees humanity as having ascended from what is inferior to it - life begins in slime and ends in intelligence - whereas traditional cultures see it as descended from its superiors. As the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins puts the matter: "We are the only people who assume that we have ascended from apes. Everybody else takes it for granted that they are descended from gods." - HUSTON SMITH16 — Ray Kurzweil

,I have never visited any city in the world where I was not told that I just missed the golden age. I seem never to be on time. Cyrus Sitema — Gore Vidal