Claude Lévi-Strauss

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

The primary function of the anthropologist is to observe, to describe, and to analyze, not to judge.

The world began without man, and it will end without him.

Man is a thinking reed, but his strength lies in his weakness.

The universe is not a collection of objects, but a network of relations.

Myth is the most fundamental form of human thought.

The savage mind is not a primitive mind, but a different kind of mind.

The purpose of myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction.

The anthropologist is a kind of bricoleur, a tinkerer who makes do with what he finds.

Culture is not a natural phenomenon, but a human construction.

The study of kinship is the study of the fundamental structures of human society.

The unconscious is the true locus of meaning.

The human mind is a universal structure, but its manifestations are diverse.

The task of anthropology is to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.

The exchange of women is the fundamental act of social organization.

The structural method is not a philosophy, but a tool for analysis.

The raw and the cooked are not just culinary categories, but conceptual categories.

The anthropologist must be a traveler in time as well as space.

The human mind is a machine for making meaning.

The study of myths is the study of the human imagination.