Claude LeviStrauss Quotes

A collection of quotes by Claude LeviStrauss.

Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) was a prominent French anthropologist and ethnologist. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of structural anthropology, emphasizing the study of underlying structures and patterns in human societies. His work challenged traditional concepts of cultural relativism and sought to establish universal principles governing human behavior. Levi-Strauss's most famous book, "Tristes Tropiques," is an autobiographical account of his fieldwork experiences in Brazil. He made significant contributions to understanding cultural diversity, mythologies, and the nature of human thought. His groundbreaking theories continue to influence the field of anthropology to this day.

The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at

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 LeviStrauss

Music

Since music is a language with some meaning at least for the

Since music is a language with some meaning at least for the immense majority of mankind, although only a tiny minority of people are capable of formulating a meaning in it, and since it is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man, a mystery that all the various disciplines come up against and which holds the key to their progress.

Claude LeviStrauss

Music

The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, h

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

Claude LeviStrauss

Questions

The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answe

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

Claude LeviStrauss

Science

Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger

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 LeviStrauss

Progress

Just as the individual is not alone in the group, nor any on

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

Claude LeviStrauss

Universe

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but h

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 LeviStrauss

Mythology Myths

Being human signifies, for each one of us, belonging to a cl

Being human signifies, for each one of us, belonging to a class, a society, a country, a continent and a civilization; and for us European earth-dwellers, the adventure played out in the heart of the New World signifies in the first place that it was not our world and that we bear responsibility for the crime of its destruction.

Claude LeviStrauss

Discovery

Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal l

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

Claude LeviStrauss

Language

Our system is the height of absurdity, since we treat the cu

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 LeviStrauss

Punishment

There is one fact that can be established. The only phenomen

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 LeviStrauss

Society

The only phenomenon with which writing has always been conco

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 LeviStrauss

Authors & Writing