Americans often have trouble enjoying the present moment.

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents.

Life, it seems, is nothing if not a series of initiations, transitions, and incorporations.

My academic identity is that of a folklorist, and for many years I have taught only folklore courses.

In my introductory course, Anthropology 160, the Forms of Folklore, I try to show the students what the major and minor genres of folklore are, and how they can be analyzed.

Future orientation is combined with a notion and expectation of progress, and nothing is impossible.

I mentioned that one of the tripartite formulas in American worldview involves time: past, present, and future.

Americans have a penchant for the future and tend to disregard the past.

Polls are frequently taken to try to tease out or determine likely directions and trends, but once taken, they belong to the past, requiring that new polls be taken.

Beautiful girls should know how to defend themselves against the advances of gentlemen.

How alive am I willing to be?

I couldn't wait until I grew up. I used to look at my mom's stockings and put them on with her high heels and mess with my hair.

You have overburdened your argument with ostentatious erudition.

Through silence, through meditation, and through non-judgment, you will access the first law, the Law of Pure Potentiality.

When you exercise your will power you release the power of life energy - not when you merely wish passively to be able to obtain an objective.

The basic anxiety, the anxiety of a finite being about the threat of non-being, cannot be eliminated. It belongs to existence itself.

The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.

Men wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices.

It isn't enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.