In place of science, the Eskimo has only magic to bridge the gap between what he can understand and what is not known. Without magic, his life would …

- Peter Farb

The dictionary is a closed system in which someone interested in the meaning of a word can go around and around and end up exactly where he started, …

- Peter Farb

A complex society is not necessarily more advanced than a simple one; it has just adapted to conditions in a more complicated way.

- Peter Farb

Gestures and facial expressions do indeed communicate, as anyone can prove by turning off the sound on a television set and asking watchers to charac…

- Peter Farb

At every moment of his life the Shoshone must be careful to observe the complicated folkways of his group, to do reverence to superhuman powers, to r…

- Peter Farb

Men in all societies possess the biological equipment to remove their hats or shoes, but it is the birth within a particular culture that decides tha…

- Peter Farb

An invention or new combination can be successful only if all if the elements necessary for the recombination are present in the culture.

- Peter Farb

No child is capable of speech until he has heard other human beings speak, and even two infants reared together cannot develop a language from scratc…

- Peter Farb

Native speakers of a language know intuitively whether a sentence is grammatical or not. They usually cannot specify exactly what is wrong, and very …

- Peter Farb