Claude Lévi-Strauss Quotes

For everything is history: What was said yesterday is history, what was said a minute ago is history. But, above all, one is led to misjudge the present, because only the study of historical development permits the weighing and evalua­ tion of the interrelationships among the components of the present- day society.

~ Claude Lévi-Strauss

The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions.

~ Claude Lévi-Strauss

For mile after mile the same melodic phrase rose up in my memory. I simply couldn’t get free of it. Each time it had a new fascination for me. Initially imprecise in outline, it seemed to become more and more intricately woven, as if to conceal from the listener how eventually it would end. This weaving and re-weaving became so complicated that one wondered how it could possibly be unravelled; and then suddenly one note would resolve the whole problem, and the solution would seem yet more audacious than the procedures which had preceded, called for, and made possible its arrival; when it was heard, all that had gone before took on a new meaning, and the quest, which had seemed arbitrary, was seen to have prepared the way for this undreamed-of solution.

~ Claude Lévi-Strauss

From time to time, too, and for the space of two or three paces, an image or an echo would rise up from the recesses of time: in the little streets of the beaters of silver and gold, for instance, there was a clear, unhurried tinkling, as if a djinn with a thousand arms was absent-mindedly practising on a xylophone.

~ Claude Lévi-Strauss

The more we claim to discriminate between cultures and customs as good and bad, the more completely do we identify ourselves with those we would condemn. By refusing to consider as human those who seem to us to be the most “savage” or “barbarous” of their representatives, we merely adopt one of their own characteristic attitudes. The barbarian is, first and foremost, the man who believes in barbarism.

~ Claude Lévi-Strauss

Not all poisonous juices are burning or bitter nor is everything which is burning and bitter poisonous.

~ Claude Lévi-Strauss

Every effort to understand destroys the object studied in favor of another object of a different nature; this second object requires from us a new effort which destroys it in favor of a third, and so on and so forth until we reach the one lasting presence, the point at which the distinction between meaning and the absence of meaning disappears: the same point from which we began.

~ Claude Lévi-Strauss

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

~ Claude Lévi-Strauss

The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions.

~ Claude Lévi-Strauss

I think that a society cannot live without a certain number of irrational beliefs. They are protected from criticism and analysis because they are irrational.

~ Claude Lévi-Strauss

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.

~ Claude Lévi-Strauss