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George Amos Dorsey
(6 Feb 1868 - 29 Mar 1931)
American anthropologist and
early U.S. ethnographer of North American.
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“As one recalls some of the
monstrous
situations under which human beings have lived and live their lives,
one marvels at man’s meekness and complacency. It can only be
explained by the quality of flesh to become calloused to situations
that if faced suddenly would provoke blisters and revolt.”
— George Amos Dorsey
from Why We Behave Like
Human Beings (1925)
“Man is a free moral agent and can
be
magnanimous and deal disinterestedly, humanity is a definite goal,
social justice is desirable and possible, individual lives may be
gloriously diversified, uniquely individualized, and yet socially
useful; or, these are mere phrases, snares to catch gulls, soothing
syrup for our troubled souls.”
— George Amos Dorsey
from Why We Behave Like
Human Beings (1925)
“The drive behind life has lost
none of its
power; proof that, impelled by that drive, man can build as well as
destroy; that in his nature is more of Vishnu the Creator than of Siva
the Destroyer.”
— George Amos Dorsey
from Why We Behave Like
Human Beings (1925)
“They are a doomed race. Wars,
smallpox,
gross immorality, a change from old ways to new ways — their
fate is the common fate of the American, whether he sails the sea in
the North,
gallops over the plain in the West, or sleeps in his hammock in the
forests of Brazil.”
— George Amos Dorsey
as reported in the Chicago
Tribune
from a lecture on the Haida Indian Nation (Nov 1897)
from a lecture on the Haida Indian Nation (Nov 1897)

