Cultures and anthropology - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

There is some wisdom, and some foolishness in every people's way.

- Walter M. Miller, Jr., ''The Soul-Empty Ones'' (1951)

No one person can change a whole culture.

- Poul Anderson, ''Ghetto'' (1954)

When two alien cultures meet, the stronger must transform the weaker with love or hate.

- Damon Knight, ''Stranger Station'' (1956)

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy (1957)

Through a Moses, or through a Hitler, or an ignorant but tyrannical grandfather, a cultural inheritance may be acquired between dusk and dawn, and many have been so acquired.

- Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)

Can we any more postulate a separate culture? Viewing the metastasis of Western Culture it seems progressively less likely. Sarah Boyle imagines a whole world which has become like California, all topographical imperfections sanded away with the sweet smelling burr of the plastic surgeon's cosmetic polisher; a world populace dieting, leisured, similar in pink and mauve hair and rhinestone shades. A land Cunt Pink and Avocado Green, brassiered and girdled by monstrous complexities of Super Highways, a California endless and unceasing, embracing and transforming the entire globe.

- Pamela Zoline, ''The Heat Death of the Universe'' (1967)

Maybe there is a recurrent mental fatigue in human cultures, induced by the short periods of enterprise. You push on with your grand vigor for a while, and then - slump; abdication of intelligence as the governing force, and of course if that's complete enough it drags down virtually everything in a long ruin.

- Edgar Pangborn, ''Mount Charity'' (1971)

The anthropologist cannot always leave his own shadow out of the picture he draws.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''TheWord forWorld Is Forest'' (1972)

When one culture has the big guns and the other has none, there is a certain predictability about the outcome.

- Joanna Russ, ''When It Changed'' (1972)

My profession is supposed to be understanding cultures - every culture, when most people don't even comprehend their own.

- GeneWolfe, ''Alien Stones'' (1972)

They never went so far as to maintain anything like the old society and culture. Music, sculpture, art, and the oral literary tradition were dead and gratefully lost. These things just got in the way of making one's living.

- George Alec Effinger, ''Contentment, Satisfaction, Cheer,Well-Being, Gladness, Joy, Comfort, and Not Having to Get Up Early Any More'' (1976)

She'd killed him with culture shock.

- William Gibson, ''Johnny Mnemonic'' (1981)

A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Friday (1982)

''Anthropology,'' Tate said disparagingly. ''Why did you want to snoop through other people's cultures? Couldn't you find what you wanted in your own?''

- Octavia E. Butler, Dawn (1987)

Some cultures send their young people to the desert to seek visions and guidance, searching for true thinking spawned by the openness of the place, the loneliness, the beauty of emptiness.

- Pat Murphy, ''Rachel in Love'' (1987)

A wise man should always respect the folkways of others, to use Carrot's happy phrase, but Vimes often had difficulty with this idea. For one thing, there were people in the world whose folkways consisted of gutting other people like clams and this was not a procedure that commanded, in Vimes, any kind of respect at all.

- Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant (1999)

There are only two things I can't stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures - and the Dutch.

- Mike Myers and Michael McCullers, Austin Powers in Goldmember (film, 2002)