Bronisław Malinowski QUOTES

1 " Wracam do mego stosunku do Anglii i rzeczy angielskich. Bezwarunkowo nie jestem bynajmniej wyjątkiem w tym, że miałem wysoce rozwiniętą anglomanię, jakiś prawie że mistyczny kult dla kultury brytyjskiej i jej przedstawicieli. Mam wrażenie, że wytworzyło się to u mnie w pierwszym rzędzie skutkiem bezpośredniego wrażenia, jakie na mnie Anglicy robili. Podróżowałem dość dużo - przed przyjazdem do Wielkiej Brytanii i za granicą spotykałem oczywiście wszędzie dużo Anglików. Bezpośrednie i zupełnie przygniatające wrażenie nieopisanego szyku, wyższości w wyglądzie, manierach, ruchach - wszystko to stawiało mi Anglików na jakimś piedestale, otaczało nimbem tego nieuchwytnego atrybutu, który określamy wyrazami "rasa", "arystokratyczność" - atrybuty, który musi być wynikiem zasadniczych cech duszy ludzkiej, skoro zeń płyną wszystkie uczucia snobizmu, megalomanii towarzyskiej, a nawet cały ustrój "towarzystwa". Anglicy byli dla mnie, jednym słowem, arystokracją narodów, byli jako naród tym, czym jest "towarzystwo" w danym społeczeństwie. "

― Bronisław Malinowski , A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term

2 " ...yesterday, returning from Wawela I had some ethnological ideas, but I can't remember what they were. "

― Bronisław Malinowski , A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term

3 " The time when we could tolerate accounts presenting us the native as a distorted, childish caricature of a human being are gone. This picture is false, and like many other falsehoods, it has been killed by Science. "

― Bronisław Malinowski

4 " Again, they have no idea of what could be called the evolution of the world or the evolution of society; that is, they do not look back towards a series of successive changes, which happened in nature or in humanity, as we do. We, in our religious and scientific outlook alike, know that earth ages and that humanity ages, and we think of both in these terms; for them, both are eternally the same, eternally youthful. "

― Bronisław Malinowski , Argonauts of the Western Pacific

5 " Ethnology or Anthropology, the science of Man, must not shun him in his innermost self, in his instinctive and emotional life. "

― Bronisław Malinowski , Argonauts of the Western Pacific

6 " There are no peoples however primitive without religion and magic. Nor are there, it must be added, any savage races lacking in either the scientific attitude, or in science, though this lack has been frequently attributed to them. "

― Bronisław Malinowski

7 " There is no doubt that the destiny of indigenous races has been tragic in the process of contact with European invasion… The historian of the future will have to register that Europeans in the past sometimes exterminated whole island peoples; that they expropriated most of the patrimony of savage races; that they introduced slavery in a specially cruel and pernicious form; and that even if they abolished it later, they treated the expatriated Negroes as outcasts and pariahs. "

― Bronisław Malinowski

8 " …freedom in its essence is the acceptance of the chains which suit you and for which you are suited, and of the harness in which you pull towards an end chosen and valued by yourself, and not imposed. It is not, and never can be, the absence of restrictions, obligations or law and of duty. "

― Bronisław Malinowski ,

9 " The whole concept of European culture as a cornucopia from which things are freely given is misleading. It does not take a specialist in anthropology to see that the European “give” is always highly selective. We never give any native people under our control – and we never shall, for it would be sheer folly as long as we stand on the basis of our present Realpolitik – the following elements of culture:

1. The instruments of physical power: fire-arms, bombing planes, poison gas, and all that makes an effective defence or aggression possible
2. We do not give out instruments of political mastery [i.e. sovereignty or voting rights]
3. We do not share with them the substance of economic wealth and advantages…. Even when under indirect economic exploitation… we allow the native a share of the profits, the full control of the economic organization remains in the hands of Western enterprise.
4. We do not admit them as equals to Church, Assembly, school, or drawing room… Full political, social and even religious equality is nowhere granted. "

― Bronisław Malinowski

10 " Beyond doubt, my love for her was one of the purest, most romantic things in my life. Friendship for her? If she were healthy, strong? No — her way of taking life would be impossible for me. Entirely impossible. We would have talked to each other as though shouting from different rooms. And yet I feel regrets. If I could cancel it all out, and never possess her soul? "

― Bronisław Malinowski , A Diary in the Strictest Sense of the Term

11 " If we insist that war is a fight between two independent and politically organized groups, war does not occur at the primitive level. "

― Bronisław Malinowski

12 " Magic enables man to carry out with confidence his important tasks, to maintain his poise and his mental integrity in fits of anger, in the throes of hate, of unrequited love, of despair and anxiety. The function of magic is to ritualize man's optimism, to enhance his faith in the victory of hope over fear. Magic expresses the greater value for man of confidence over doubt, of steadfastness over vacillation, of optimism over pessimism. "

― Bronisław Malinowski

13 " This goal is, briefly, to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world. We have to study man, and we must study what concerns him most intimately, that is, the hold which life has on him. In each culture, the values are slightly different ; people aspire after different aims, follow different impulses, yearn after a different form of happiness. In each culture, we find different institutions in which man pursues his life-interest, different customs by which he satisfies his aspirations, different codes of law and morality which reward his virtues or punish his defections. To study the institutions, customs, and codes or to study the behaviour and mentality without the subjective desire of feeling by what these people live, of realising the substance of their happiness—is, in my opinion, to miss the greatest reward which we can hope to obtain from the study of man. "

― Bronisław Malinowski , Argonauts of the Western Pacific

14 " Ale obok tego ważną rolę odgrywał fakt, że miałem ochotę poznać Anglię, która mnie od dawna pociągała jakimś dziwnym urokiem. Teraz zaś miałem dobrą sposobność do zaaklimatyzowania się w tym kraju, bo jechała właśnie z Lipska do Londynu dobra moja przyjaciółka Mrs. N., Angielka z Kolonii (Nowej Zelandii), która dla studiów muzycznych bawiła w Europie i chciała przez jakiś rok posiedzieć w Londynie przed ostatecznym powrotem do kraju. Zarówno jej towarzystwo samo przez się, jak też liczne ułatwienia w poznaniu ludzi, stosunków, w szybkiej nauce języka - wszystko to pociągało mnie i skłaniało do decyzji. Mam wrażenie, że gdybym nie był poznał Mrs. N., nie byłbym nigdy zajmować się socjologią, ani też zanglizował się do pewnego stopnia. "

― Bronisław Malinowski , A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term

15 " Tanto la magia como la religión surgen y funcionan en momentos de carácter emotivo: las crisis de
la vida, los fracasos en empresas importantes, la muerte y la iniciación en los misterios de la tribu, el amor infortunado o el odio insatisfecho. Tanto la magia como la religión presentan soluciones ante esas situaciones y atolladeros, ofreciendo no un modo empírico de salir con bien de los tales, sino los ritos y la
fe en el dominio de lo sobrenatural. "

― Bronisław Malinowski

16 " It is therefore not going beyond what is fully granted by facts, to maintain that a general loss of interest in life, of the joie de vivre, the cutting of all the bonds of intense interest, which bind members of a human community to existence, will result in their giving up the desire to live altogether, and that therefore they will fall an easy prey to any disease, as well as fail to multiply. "

― Bronisław Malinowski , Argonauts of the Western Pacific

17 " Zanadto wlazłem w towarzystwo, które tu kwitnie. Ciągle zadaję się z Francuzką i drem franc[uskim] (Żydkiem) z pierwszej oraz
z małpą australską, wobec której wypuszczam zresztą dużo snobizmu naukowego. "

― Bronisław Malinowski , A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term

18 " Czarne małpy udające Europejczyków w tramie dają mi poczucie wyższości rasy białej. "

― Bronisław Malinowski , A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term

19 " The final goal of which an ethnographer should never lose sight…is, briefly, to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world "

― Bronisław Malinowski

20 " So acts every ‘man-in-the-street’ in our own society, so has acted the average member of any society through the past ages, and so acts the present-day savage; and the lower his level of cultural development, the greater stickler he will be for good manners, propriety and form, and the more incomprehensive and odious to him will be the non-conforming point of view. "

― Bronisław Malinowski , Argonauts of the Western Pacific