Marvin Harris Quotes

#1. I think that by following the route that I have tried to outline, one gets into a much more interesting and productive series of questions than those that result from saying simply that Chinese don't like milk because they don't like milk.

Marvin Harris

#2. Ethnography literally means 'a portrait of a people.' An ethnography is a written description of a particular culture - the customs, beliefs, and behavior - based on information collected through fieldwork.

Marvin Harris

#3. Yes, a general principle that comes out of research behind Good to Eat is that there are no world religions that have acted to decrease the potential for the nutritional well-being of their followers.

Marvin Harris

#4. But with the Industrial Revolution and introduction of various industrial techniques for purifying sugar, we have a situation in which what we are consuming is not good nutritionally or ecologically.

Marvin Harris

#5. Anyone who
contends there is something inherently more "natural" about a
diet rich in wheat or rice than one rich in meat knows little about
either culture or nature . Of

Marvin Harris

#6. Unfortunately, it makes as little sense
to offer this kind of explanation as to say that we have become
too "civilized " to eat insects or horses.

Marvin Harris

#7. Pigs prefer to wallow in clean mud, but if nothing else is available, they will frequently wallow in their own urine, giving rise to the notion that they are dirty animals.

Marvin Harris

#8. 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

#9. I don't know of any cases where as a result of religious precepts a population have found themselves enjoying less food than they would have if they didn't follow this particular religion.

Marvin Harris

#10. Here you do have forests, where pigs could be raised by letting them root about in the forests for a good part of the year. Therefore, you have a different attitude toward them compared with what continues to exist in the Middle East.

Marvin Harris

#11. In many ways the rise of the state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery

Marvin Harris

#12. I don't see how you can write anything of value if you don't offend someone.

Marvin Harris

#13. There are very important and practical issues raised by following this alternative route which says, let's look to material conditions, to the systems of production, to the needs that human beings have, and to competing alternative solutions to the satisfaction of those needs.

Marvin Harris

#14. Unfortunately, the food industry has not yet faced this situation and begun taking measures to avoid exploiting our weakness for not knowing when we have had enough.

Marvin Harris

#15. Aztecs had not only failed to repress the eating of enemy dead,
they were practicing a state-sponsored form of human sacrifice
and cannibalism on a scale never rivaled before or since.

Marvin Harris

#16. Like all dominant groups, men seek to promote an image of their subordinate's nature that contributes to the preservation of the status quo. For thousands of years, males have seen women not as women could be, but only as males want them to be.

Marvin Harris

#17. Like most North Americans, I'd been raised on the notion that milk is the first food, and everybody must like it because it's so good and so important for growing up and for being healthy.

Marvin Harris

#18. 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

#19. If I can bring some light to bear on problems like that, I feel that people will be enlightened not only on the question but also on a way of approaching such questions.

Marvin Harris

#20. Now we are in a situation in which for a significant part of the industrial world too much could become a danger, especially too much of the things which are really not good for us in such large quantities.

Marvin Harris

#21. The general proposition is that the resources that will be utilized are the ones that contribute most to the overall efficiency of the production system. The third parameter has to do with our commercial world, our search for profits.

Marvin Harris

#22. However, further research has shown that it is the normal condition for humans and for most other mammals. It seems pretty clear why this is the case for most mammals and for most human beings.

Marvin Harris

#23. Every theory presented as a scientific concept is just that; it's a theory that tries to explain more about the world than previous theories have done. It is open to being challenged and to being proven incorrect.

Marvin Harris

#24. 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

#25. Food, like sex, is one of the principal kinds of human activity that engage people when they wonder about how to account for different kinds of human behaviour.

Marvin Harris

#26. When a woman gives birth to a child, the child needs to be able to digest the mother's milk; but when this child is old enough to begin to eat other foods, there is some switching off of this ability to consume milk.

Marvin Harris

#27. Pigs eat grass if they are very hungry, but they can't use it as a regular source of food.

Marvin Harris

#28. Tantrics seek oneness with the universe
through eating meat, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, dancing,
and ritual sexual intercourse.

Marvin Harris

#29. The answer has to be sought in the material conditions of the production and utilization of cattle in India compared with the production and utilization of cattle in other parts of the world.

Marvin Harris

#30. The commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' does not say it's O.K. to kill some people and not others.

Marvin Harris