Claude Levi-Strauss Men Quotations

The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions.

Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing.

The world began without man, and it will complete itself without him.

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact.

Natural man did not precede society, nor is he outside it.

Civilization has ceased to be that delicate flower which was preserved and painstakingly cultivated in one or two sheltered areas of a soil rich in wild species ... Mankind has opted for monoculture; it is in the process of creating a mass civilization, as beetroot is grown in the mass. Henceforth, man's daily bill of fare will consist only of this one item.

Since music is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man.

Just as the individual is not alone in the group, nor anyone in society alone among the others, so man is not alone in the universe.