Ashley Montagu quotes

The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.
- Ashley Montagu

The idea is to die young as late as possible.
- Ashley Montagu

The loving touch, like music, often utters the things that cannot be spoken.
- Ashley Montagu

The only measure of what you believe is what you do. If you want to know what people believe, don't read what they write, don't ask what they believe, just observe what they do.
- Ashley Montagu

Love is the supreme form of communication. In the hierarchy of needs, love stands as the supreme developing agent of the humanity of the person. As such, the teaching of love should be the central core of all early childhood curriculum with all other subjects growing naturally out of such teaching.
- Ashley Montagu

Intellect without humanity is not good enough...what the world is suffering from at the present time is not so much an overabundance of intellect as an insufficiency of humanity.
- Ashley Montagu

The idea of "race" represents one of the most dangerous myths of our time.
- Ashley Montagu

The family unit is the institution for the systematic production of mental illness.
- Ashley Montagu

The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health.
- Ashley Montagu

I want to die young at a ripe old age.
- Ashley Montagu

By virtue of being born to humanity, every human being has a right to the development and fulfillment of his potentialities as a human being.
- Ashley Montagu

The whole of life is a journey toward youthful old age, toward self-contemplation, love, gaiety, and, in a fundamental sense, the most gratifying time of our lives. . . . "Old age" should be a harvest time when the riches of life are reaped and enjoyed, while it continues to be a special period for self-development and expansion.
- Ashley Montagu

To admit ignorance is to exhibit wisdom.
- Ashley Montagu

Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason.
- Ashley Montagu

The basic fact is simple: life begins not at birth, but conception.
- Ashley Montagu

Psychosclerosis: the hardening of the attitude which causes a person to cease dreaming, seeing, thinking, and leading.
- Ashley Montagu

The world is so full of wonderful things we should all, if we were taught how to appreciate it, be far richer than kings.
- Ashley Montagu

Hatred is love frustrated.
- Ashley Montagu

The only measure of what you believe is what you do.
- Ashley Montagu

The measure of man's humanity is the extent and intensity of his love for mankind.
- Ashley Montagu

Stand still, close your eyes and listen; in the silence you can hear the cries of pain and low moans of anguish of animals waiting to die... do everything you can even if today it is just one small thing. There are no excuses for inaction, despair, egotism, or petulance that matter to the animals.
- Ashley Montagu

Because women live creatively, they rarely experience the need to depict or write about that which to them is a primary experience and which men know only at a second remove. Women create naturally, men create artificially.
- Ashley Montagu

Do we have the right to rear animals in order to kill them so that we may feed appetites in which we have been artificially conditioned from childhood?
- Ashley Montagu

The Good Book—one of the most remarkable euphemisms ever copied.
- Ashley Montagu

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.
- Ashley Montagu