Ashley Montagu, fully Montague Francis Ashley Montagu, born Israel Ehrenberg

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

The idea is to die young as late as possible.

The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.

Man creates God just as he creates himself, and he creates God in his own image, often as he aspires to be, often as he in reality is.

Cooperation, not conflict, has been the most valuable form of behavior for humans taken at any stage of their evolutionary history.

It is the mark of the cultured man that he is aware of the fact that equality is an ethical and not a biological principle.

The [doctor] has been taught to be interested not in health but in disease. What the public is taught is that health is the cure for disease.

To admit ignorance is to exhibit wisdom.

Human beings are not born with human nature - they develop it.