Clyde Kluckhohn Quotes

Every human is like all other humans, some other humans, and no other human.

Every man is in certain respects (a) like all other men, (b) like some other men, (c) like no other man. —Clyde Kluckhohn and Henry A. Murray

Anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn has noted the following: Every culture has a concept of murder, distinguishing this from execution, killing in war and other justifiable homicides. The notions of incest and other regulations upon sexual behavior, the prohibitions on untruth under defined circumstances, of restitution and reciprocity, of mutual obligations between parents and children—these and many other moral concepts are altogether universal.17

Ordinarily we are unaware of the special lens through which we look at life. It would hardly be fish who discovered the existence of water. Students who had not gone beyond the horizon of their own society could not be expected to perceive custom which was the stuff of their own thinking.