A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

~ Clifford Geertz

Clifford Geertz Culture Religion Society Symbolism Symbols

Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is.

~ Clifford Geertz

Clifford Geertz Anthropology Culture

It may be in the cultural particularities of people — in their oddities — that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found.

~ Clifford Geertz

Clifford Geertz Anthropology Culture

Understanding a people's culture exposes their normalness without reducing their particularity...It renders them accessible: setting them in the frame of their own banalities, it dissolves their opacity.

~ Clifford Geertz

Clifford Geertz Anthropology Culture Geertz

What we had actually demonstrated was our cowardice, but there is fellowship in that too.

~ Clifford Geertz

Clifford Geertz Candor Commiseration Friendship Sincerity Weakness

The way in which mathematicians and physicists and historians talk is quite different, and what a physicist means by physical intuition and what a mathematician means by beauty or elegance are things worth thinking about.

~ Clifford Geertz

Clifford Geertz Thinking Intuition