Ashley Montagu

Ashley Montagu was a British anthropologist and humanist who wrote about issues such as race and gender and their relation to politics and development.

Sourced

• [C]ircumcision, an archaic ritual mutilation that has no justification whatever and no place in a civilized society.
  • "Mutilated Humanity" (1991)

• The family unit is the institution for the systematic production of mental illness.
  • interview on "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson" promoting the latest edition of his book The Natural Superiority of Women (orig. 1952)

• The Eskimos live among ice all their lives but have no single word for ice.
  • Man: His first Million Years, this quote begins the penultimate chapter of Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan

• 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. Growing Young (Granby, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1989), p. 120.

Unsourced

• Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.

• The natural superiority of women is a biological fact, and a socially acknowledged reality.

• The idea is to die young as late as possible.

• The majority of people believe in incredible things that are absolutely false. The majority of people daily act in a manner prejudicial to their general well-being.

• Absolute truth belongs only to one class of humans ... the class of absolute fools.
  • quoted by James Davidson Hunter in Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (1991)