“A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accordance with the following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history.”-Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History

“As members of society, most of us see only what we expect to see, and what we expect to see is what we are condition to see when we have learned the definitions and classifications of our culture.” –Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols, 1967

"War in our own civilization is as good an illustration as one can take of the destructive lengths to which the development of a culturally selected trait may go. If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits." --–Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture, 1934

“Words and gestures transport us to a realm of experience where what the eye sees and the ear hears is not the same as what the mind perceives… A piacular ox is the sacrificer himself and in the ox he dies in symbol. But the sacrificer is not present. The hand of the officiant on the back of the ox represents his hand. And when we look for the ox about to be slaughtered we see a cucumber.” –E.E. Evens-Pritchard, Nuer Religion, 1956