Ashley Montagu > Quotes

“The idea is to die young as late as possible.”
― Ashley Montagu

“It neither kills outright nor inflicts apparent physical harm, yet the extent of its destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record - and its potential damage to the quality of human life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason this sickness of the soul might well be called the 'Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.' Its more conventional name, of course, is dehumanization.”
― Ashley Montagu, The Dehumanization of Man

“The indifference, callousness, and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering towards animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of human spirit.”
― Ashley Montagu

“The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.”
― Ashley Montagu, Science and Creationism

“Human communication, 'as the saying goes, is a clash of symbols' it covers a multitude of signs. But it is more than media and messages, information and persuasion; it also meets a deeper need and serves a higher purpose. Whether clear or garbled, tumultuous or silent, deliberate or fatally inadvertent, communication is the ground of meeting and the foundation of community. It is, in short, the essential human connection.”
― Ashley Montagu, The Human Connection

“The family is the basis of society. As the family is, so is the society, and it is human beings who make a family-not the quantity of them, but the quality of them.”
― Ashley Montagu

“Unfortunately, we-especially in the United States-have become increasingly mechanized, so that today we feel very strongly that if we can take anything out of human hands and especially out of the human heart and put it through a machine, we have made progress. Indeed, we flatter ourselves that we can make machines that think like human beings, while not always pausing to reflect that in the process we have also succeeded in making millions of human beings who can feel and think like machines. It is a sorry reflection.”
― Ashley Montagu

“The world is so full of wonderful things we should all, if we were taught how to appreciate it, be far richer than kings.”
― Ashley Montagu

“Science has proof without any certainty.
Creationists have certainty without any proof.”
― Ashley Montagu

“In our society the elderly are regarded as biodegradable and superfluous, instead of what they really represent: a biological elite who, with weathered wisom, have much to offer the world.”
― Ashley Montagu, Touching the Human Significance of the Skin Second Edition

“He who would love his fellow man
Must not expect too much of him.”
― Ashley Montagu, Cultured Man

“The behavioral trait most frequently associated with the long-lived is placidity.”
― Ashley Montagu, Cultured Man

“The goal in life is to die young, as late as possible”
― Ashley Montagu, Growing Young

“The Good Book" - one of the most remarkable euphemisms ever coined.”
― Ashley Montagu

“All cultures must be judged in relation to their own history, and all individuals and groups in relation to their cultural history, and definitely not by the arbitrary standard of any single culture.”
― Ashley Montagu