Marvin Harris > Quotes

“I don't see how you can write anything of value if you don't offend someone.”
― Marvin Harris

“In many ways the rise of the state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery”
― Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures

“Hindus and Westerners alike see in the meat-eating taboos of India a triumph of morals over appetite. This is a dangerous misrepresentation of cultural processes. Hindu vegetarianism was a victory not of spirit over matter but of reproductive over productive forces.”
― Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures

“The availability of domesticated animal species played an important role in the prohibition of cannibalism and the development of religions of love and mercy in the states and empires of the Old World. Christianity, it may yet turn out, was more the gift of the lamb in the manger than the child who was born in it.”
― Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures

“Many humanists and artists recoil from the proposition that cultural evolution has hitherto been shaped by unconscious impersonal forces. The determined nature of the past fills them with apprehension as to the possibility of an equally determined future. But their fears are misplaced. It is only through an awareness of the determined nature of the past that we can hope to make the future less dependent on unconscious and impersonal forces. In the birth of a science of culture others profess to see the death of moral initiative. For my part, I cannot see how a lack of intelligence concerning the lawful processes that have operated so far can be the platform on which to rear a civilized future. And so in the birth of a science of culture I find the beginning not the end of moral initiative. Let the protectors of historical spontaneity beware : if the processes of cultural evolution are what I have discerned, they are morally negligent to urge others to think and act as if such processes did not exist.”
― Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures

“We can eat and digest everything from rancid mammary gland
secretions to fungi to rocks (or cheese, mushrooms, and salt if
you prefer euphemisms).”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“I hold it perniciously false to teach that all cultural forms are equally probable and that by mere force of will an inspired individual can at any moment alter the trajectory of an entire cultural system in a direction convenient to any philosophy. Convergent and parallel trajectories far outnumber divergent trajectories in cultural evolution. Most people are conformists. History repeats itself in countless acts of individual obedience to cultural rule and pattern, and individual wills seldom prevail in matters requiring radical alterations of deeply conditioned beliefs and practices.
At the same time, nothing I have written in this book supports the view that the individual is helpless before the implacable march of history or that resignation and despair are appropriate responses to the concentration of industrial managerial power. The determinism that has governed cultural evolution has never been the equivalent of the determinism that governs a closed physical system. Rather, it resembles the causal sequences that account for the evolution of plant and animal species.”
― Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures

“Strictly speaking, human flesh itself contains the highest-qual­
ity protein that one can eat.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“With the rise of the state all of this was swept away.
For the past five or six millenia, nine-tenths of all the people who ever lived did so as peasants or as members of some other servile caste or class.
With the rise of the state, ordinary men seeking to use nature's bounty had to get someone else's permission and had to pay for it with taxes,
tribute or extra labor. The weapons and techniques of war and organized aggression were taken
away from them and turned over to specialist-soldiers and policemen controlled by military, religious, and civil bureaucrats. For the first time there appeared on earth kings, dictators, high
priests, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, governors, mayors,
generals, admirals, police chiefs, judges, lawyers, and jailers, along
with dungeons, jails, penitentiaries, and concentration camps. Under
the tutelage of the state, human beings learned for the first time
how to bow, grovel, kneel, and kowtow. In many ways the rise of the
state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery.”
― Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures

“There already exists the electronic capability for the tracking of individual behavior by centralized networks of surveillance and record-keeping computers. It is highly probable that the conversion to nuclear energy production will provide precisely those basic material conditions most appropriate for using the power of the computer to establish a new and enduring form of despotism. Only by decentralizing our basic mode of energy production—by breaking the cartels that monopolize the present system of energy production and by creating new decentralized forms of energy technology—can we restore the ecological and cultural configuration that led to the emergence of political democracy in Europe.”
― Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures

“In fact the taboo
against killing and eating one's relatives is the most fundamental
precondition if people are to live together and cooperate on a
daily basis.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“Nuestra especie ha albergado creencias en seres animistas durante al menos 35.000 años.”
― Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going – A Witty Study of Humanity by a Noted Anthropologist

“...la guerra era una forma derrochadora y brutal de combatir la presión demográfica. Pero a falta de anticonceptivos eficaces o de posibilidades de abortar bajo control médico, la alternativa era también derrochadora y brutal: subalimentación, hambre, enfermedades y una vida breve, pobre y mezquina para todo el mundo.”
― Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going – A Witty Study of Humanity by a Noted Anthropologist

“We now know that the greatest concentration of "abnormal"
lactose absorbers lives in Europe north of the Alps. Over 95
percent of the Dutch, Danes, Swedes, and other Scandinavians
have enough lactase enzyme to digest very large quantities of
lactose throughout their lives. South of the Alps, high to inter­
mediate levels prevail, falling to intermediate and low levels in
Spain, Italy and Greece and among Jews and city-dwelling Arabs
in the Middle East. Intermediate to high levels of absorbers occur
again in northern India, while high levels of absorbers occur in
isolated enclaves such as the Bedouin nomads of Arabia and cer­
tain pastoral groups in northern Nigeria and East Africa.
Mammals obviously have to be able to drink milk in infancy,”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“Tenemos que librarnos de la idea de que somos una especie agresiva por naturaleza que no sabe evitar la guerra.”
― Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going – A Witty Study of Humanity by a Noted Anthropologist

“When first contacted by Europeans, the
peoples of New Guinea, northern Australia, and most of the
islands of Melanesia such as the Solomon Islands, the New He­
brides, and New Caledonia practiced some degree of warfare
cannibalism.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“THE PUZZLE of cannibalism concerns the socially sanctioned con­
sumption of human flesh when other foods are available.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“En una sociedad cuyo principal problema de nutrición es la obesidad, se olvida fácilmente lo horrible que puede ser para el organismo humano la falta de comida y de bebida.”
― Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going – A Witty Study of Humanity by a Noted Anthropologist

“Aunque en la mayor parte de las sociedades de nivel estatal un varón respetable normal y corriente podía ser infiel en el matrimonio, mantener queridas y visitar prostitutas, las mujeres respetables normales y corrientes se exponían casi universalmente a duras sanciones si manifestaban cualquier tendencia promiscua o poliándrica.”
― Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going – A Witty Study of Humanity by a Noted Anthropologist

“It’s the only thing that’s never been tried.”
― Marvin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture

“La homosexualidad, ejemplo flagrante de sexo no reproductor, se convirtió, junto a la masturbación, las relaciones premaritales, las prácticas anticonceptivas y el aborto, en blanco principal de las fuerzas pronatalistas.”
― Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going – A Witty Study of Humanity by a Noted Anthropologist

“Los hombres nunca han tenido que poner en un plato de la balanza el placer sexual y en el otro la dolorosa prueba en que culmina el embarazo.”
― Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going – A Witty Study of Humanity by a Noted Anthropologist

“Counter-culture celebrates the supposedly natural life of primitive peoples. Its members wear beads, headbands, body paint, and colorful tattered clothing; they yearn to be a tribe. They seem to believe that tribal peoples are nonmaterialistic, spontaneous, and reverently in touch with occult sources of enchantment...”
― Marvin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture

“Oggi, che siamo sull'orlo della terza guerra mondiale, non siamo certo in grado di guardare con disprezzo gli aztechi. Nell'epoca nucleare il mondo sopravvive solo perché ciascun contendente è convinto che il livello morale dell'altro sia abbastanza basso da autorizzare, per rappresaglia, l'annientamento di centinaia di migliaia di persone al primo colpo inferto dall'avversario. Grazie alla radioattività i sopravvissuti non saranno neppure in grado di seppellire i morti... - p. 136”
― Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures

“In view of the frequent occurrence of modern domestic groups that do not consist of, or contain, an exclusive pair-bonded father and mother, I cannot see why anyone should insist that our ancestors were reared in monogamous nuclear families and that pair-bonding is more natural than other arrangements.”
― Marvin Harris , Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going – A Witty Study of Humanity by a Noted Anthropologist

“Las interpretaciones musicales, desde el lastimero punteado de una simple cuerda de violín, hasta el frenesí vertiginoso del rock, ¿celebran cada una a su manera la evolución victoriosa de las señales auditivas sobre las señales visuales, el nacimiento del lenguaje y el comienzo del extraordinario vuelo de las culturas humanas?”
― Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going – A Witty Study of Humanity by a Noted Anthropologist

“Humans are big animals, but it takes an
immense effort just to capture a few of them. The hunted are as
alert, evasive, and as well-informed about hunting as the hunters.”
― Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture

“Puesto que la mayoría de la gente no tiene que enfrentarse a tales decisiones para ganarse el sustento, las visiones animistas del mundo siguen siendo más atrayentes que las nociones contrarias a ella, incluso en civilizaciones urbanas altamente tecnificadas.”
― Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going – A Witty Study of Humanity by a Noted Anthropologist

“Puesto que la carne es el alimento más prestigioso y universalmente deseado por los seres humanos, es también el alimento más prestigioso y universalmente deseado por los dioses.”
― Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going – A Witty Study of Humanity by a Noted Anthropologist

“...las mujeres nunca han dispuesto de tanta libertad como los hombres para elegir la opción de la pluralidad de asociaciones sexuales. Y esta falta de libertad no tiene nada que ver con las estrategias sexuales relacionadas con el éxito reproductor; antes bien, es resultado de la política sexual de la doble moral, utilizada por los varones, dentro de su intento por controlar las potencialidades productivas y reproductoras de las mujeres, con objeto de dominar al sexo femenino y reprimir su sexualidad.”
― Marvin Harris, Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going – A Witty Study of Humanity by a Noted Anthropologist