Ashley Montagu

“The doctor has been taught to be interested not in health but in disease. What the public is taught is that health is the cure for disease.”

“The family unit is the institution for the systematic production of mental illness.”

“The Eskimos live among ice all their lives but have no single word for ice.”

“The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health.”

“Bigotry and science can have no communication with each other, for science begins where bigotry and absolute certainty end. The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof. Let us never forget that tyranny most often springs from a fanatical faith in the absoluteness of one’s beliefs.”

“The world is so full of wonderful things we should all, if we were taught how to appreciate it, be far richer than kings.”

“[C]ircumcision, an archaic ritual mutilation that has no justification whatever and no place in a civilized society.”

“There have been some medical schools in which somewhere along the assembly line, a faculty member has informed the students, not so much by what he said but by what he did, that there is an intimate relation between curing and caring.”

“The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.”