Claude Levi-Strauss Quotes - Page 2

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• The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Writing, Class, Cities

  34 Copy quote

• Scientific knowledge advances haltingly and is stimulated by contention and doubt.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Knowledge, Science, Doubt

  29 Copy quote

• The anthropologist respects history, but he does not accord it a special value. He conceives it as a study complementary to his own: one of them unfurls the range of human societies in time, the other in space.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Space, Special, Doe

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• No contact with savage Indian tribes has ever daunted me more than the morning I spent with an old lady swathed in woolies who compared herself to a rotten herring encased in a block of ice.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Morning, Block, Ice

  35 Copy quote

• Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize the immense riches accumulated by the human race. By underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Past, Race, Ideas

  "Tristes Tropiques". Book by Claude Lévi-Strauss, translated by John and Doreen Weightman. Chapter 38: "A Little Glass of Rum," pp. 393, 1955.

  20 Copy quote

• In the old days, people used to risk their lives in India or in the Americas in order to bring back products which now seem to us to have been of comically little worth, such as brazilwood and pepper, which added a new range of sense experience to a civilization which had never suspected its own insipidity... From these same lands our modern Marco Polos now bring back the moral spices of which our society feels an increasing need as it is conscious of sinking further into boredom, but that this time they take the form of photographs, books, and travelers tales.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Book, Order, Land

  10 Copy quote

• Anthropology found its Galileo in Rivers, its Newton in Mauss.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Rivers, Newton, Found

  36 Copy quote

• Music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated, that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out only by few, and that it alone among all the languages unites the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable - these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Music, Character, Mean

  27 Copy quote

• Our system is the height of absurdity, since we treat the culprit both as a child, so as to have the right to punish him, and as an adult, in order to deny him consolation.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Children, Order, Punishment

  "Tristes Tropiques". Book by Claude Lévi-Strauss, translated by John and Doreen Weightman. Chapter 38: "A Little Glass of Rum," pp. 388-389, 1955.

  33 Copy quote

• While I complain of being able to glimpse no more than the shadow of the past, I may be insensitive to reality as it is taking shape at this very moment, since I have not reached the stage of development at which I would be capable of perceiving it. A few hundred years hence, in this same place, another traveller, as despairing as myself, will mourn the disappearance of what I might have seen, but failed to see.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Past, Reality, Years

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.49, Penguin

  12 Copy quote

• The work of the painter, the poet or the musician, like the myths and symbols of the savage, ought to be seen by us, if not as a superior form of knowledge, at least as the most fundamental and the only one really common to us all; scientific thought is merely the sharp point more penetrating because it has been whetted on the stone of fact, but at the cost of some loss of substance and its effectiveness is to be explained by its power to pierce sufficiently deeply for the main body of the tool to follow the head.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Loss, Effectiveness, Musician

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.121, Penguin

  12 Copy quote

• In the case of European towns, the passing of centuries provides an enhancement; in the case of American towns, the passing of years brings degeneration. It is not simply that they have been newly built; they were built so as to be renewable as quickly as they were put up, that is, badly.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Years, Enhancement, Towns

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.96, Penguin

  22 Copy quote

• Teaching and research are not to be confused with training for a profession. Their greatness and their misfortune is that they are a refuge or a mission.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Confused, Teaching, Greatness

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.59, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

• I can't help thinking that science would be more appealing if it had no practical use.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Thinking, Would Be, Use

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• The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining. If the composer withholds more than we anticipate, we experience a delicious falling sensation; we feel we have been torn from a stable point on the musical ladder and thrust into the void. When the composer withholds less, the opposite occurs: he forces us to perform gymnastic exercises more skillful than our own.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Music, Spring, Fall

  17 Copy quote

• There is one fact that can be established. The only phenomenon which, always and in all parts of the world, seems to be linked with the appearance of writing

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Writing, Society, World

  14 Copy quote

• I hate travelling and explorers

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Hate, I Hate, Explorers

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.24, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• These facts make the creator of music a being like the gods, and make music itself the supreme mystery of human knowledge.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Facts, Mystery, Humans

  "'Mythologiques I: Le cru et le cuit' ('The Raw and the Cooked')". Book by Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1964.

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• Not only does a journey transport us over enormous distances, it also causes us to move a few degrees up or down in the social scale. It displaces us physically and also for better or for worse takes us out of our class context, so that the colour and flavour of certain places cannot be dissociated from the always unexpected social level on which we find ourselves in experiencing them.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Distance, Moving, Journey

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.87, Penguin

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• The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining. . . .

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Spring, Thinking, Musical

  8 Copy quote

• [Photography] remains servile to a thoughtless vision of the world... As the term snapshot suggests, photography seizes the moment and exhibits it.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Photography, Vision, Snapshots

  7 Copy quote

• The police are not entrusted with a mission which differentiates them from those they serve. Being unconcerned with ultimate purposes, they are inseparable from the persons and interests of their masters, and shine with their reflected glory.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Shining, Police, Purpose

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.357, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

• How can my old photographs fail to create in me a feeling of emptiness and sorrow? They make me acutely aware that this second deprivation will be final this time.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Feelings, Sorrow, Finals

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• [Serialism] is like a sailless ship, driven out to sea by its captain, who has grown tired of its being used only as a pontoon, and who is privately convinced that by subjecting life aboard to the rules of an elaborate protocol, he will prevent the crew from thinking nostalgically either of their home port or of their ultimate destination.…

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Home, Tired, Thinking

  "The Raw and the Cooked : Introduction to a Science of Mythology" translated by Doreen and John Weightman, (p. 113), 1975.

  4 Copy quote

• All the essentials of humanity's artistic treasures can be found in New York.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  New York, Humanity, Treasure

  8 Copy quote

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