Marvin Harris Quotes

Man is by nature a political animal.

I will always love psychology, and the basis of psychology is family.

I feel more comfortable with gorillas than people. I can anticipate what a gorilla's going to do, and they're purely motivated.

Oh, I'm a psychology nerd; I love to learn about why people behave the way they do, how experiences influence us.

Humans are social creatures that really crave intimacy.

Music is the reason I started talking to people. When I started singing in bars and trains, I began to learn the behaviour of people. Music was the bait that helped me get something from them and give myself to them.

I observe how people walk, laugh and talk. More than people I observe animals.

Human interaction is not a simple thing.

The responses of the baby monkey are very similar to those of a human baby.

My mom lives with me. She lives with me, yeah. I'm a mommy's boy, you know.

I know, for a fact, that I'm a very different person on my own than I am with someone else. We are different with each other. These things are constantly adjusted. And that's true of humans. That's not just true of famous people.

It is in the encounter of the maternal guiding instincts with the sensitive periods of the newly born that conscious love develops between parent and child.

When infants aren't held, they can become sick, even die. It's universally accepted that children need love, but at what age are people supposed to stop needing it? We never do. We need love in order to live happily, as much as we need oxygen in order to live at all.

People Propose, Science Studies, Technology Conforms.

We all have friends we love dearly that couldn't pass for human in a strict Turing test.

Mothers, take time to be a real friend to your children. Listen to your children, really listen. Talk with them, laugh and joke with them, sing with them, cry with them, hug them, honestly praise them. Yes, regularly spend unused one-on-one time with each child. Be a real friend to your children.

The only way to look at men is like they're electrons. They have all these charges sticking out, and they're always looking for a hole where they can put those charges.

I tell my kids, 'I am thinking about you every other minute of my day.'

Telephone companies sell us voice plans because they know we're not going to use them. We're hiding from each other. People say that calls aren't efficient, but trying to bring efficiency into your intimacy can get you into a lot of trouble.

When Lila was born, "I felt like, now I've got a partner in crime".

Animals have always left me with a curiosity about human nature. I trust animals more than most people.

In our own presence, we all pretend to be simpler than we are: thus we take a break from our fellow human beings.

Treat 'em like dogs, and you'll have dogs' works and dogs' actions. Treat 'em like men, and you'll have men's works.

When we choose to be parents, we accept another human being as part of ourselves, and a large part of our emotional selves will stay with that person as long as we live. From that time on, there will be another person on this earth whose orbit around us will affect us as surely as the moon affects the tides, and affect us in some ways more deeply than anyone else can. Our children are extensions of ourselves.

…I think,' concluded Anne, hitting on a very vital truth, 'that we always love best the people who need us.