In the field one has to face a chaos of facts, some of which are so small that they seem insignificant; others loom so large that they are hard to en….

You utter a vow or forge a signature and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman or prison..

Magic enables man to carry out with confidence his important tasks, to maintain his poise and his mental integrity in fits of anger, in the throes of….

I, personally, am unable to accept any revealed religion, Christian or not..

An order given in battle, an instruction issued by the master of a sailing ship, a cry for help, are as powerful in modifying the course of events as….

The anthropologist must relinquish his comfortable position in the long chair on the veranda of the missionary compound, Government station, or plant….

There are no peoples however primitive without religion and magic. Nor are there, it must be added at one, any savage races lacking in either the sci….

Coastal sailing as long as it is perfectly safe and easy commands no magic. Overseas expeditions are invariably bound up with ceremonies and ritual. ….

For no sooner had I begun to read this great work [Frasier, The Golden Bough ], than I became immersed in it and enslaved by it. I realized then that….

The magnificent title of the Functional School of Anthropology has been bestowed on myself, in a way on myself, and to a large extent out of my own s….

Both magic and religion are based strictly on mythological tradition, and they also both exist in the atmosphere of the miraculous, in a constant rev….

[W.H.R.] Rivers is the Rider Haggard of anthropology; I shall be the Conrad..

The final goal ... is to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world..