Top 36 Quotes by Clifford Geertz

If there's ever a place where you can't argue that you can put the facts over here and the text over there and see if they fit, it is surely in anthropology.

I think the perception of there being a deep gulf between science and the humanities is false.

Gender consciousness has become involved in almost every intellectual field: history, literature, science, anthropology. There's been an extraordinary advance.

I was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things.

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

I had a hard time convincing students that they were going to North Africa to understand the North Africans, not to understand themselves.

I don't think things are moving toward an omega point; I think they're moving toward more diversity.

If I remember correctly, a writer is someone who wants to convey information. Language or writing is a code.

Most anthropologists are doing straightforward ethnography, and should.

My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things.