Claude Lévi-Strauss

The world is a story, and it is the task of the anthropologist to tell it.

The world began without man and it will end without him. The institutions, manners and customs which I shall have spent my life in cataloguing and trying to understand are a transient efflorescence of a creative process in relation to which they are in no sense an end.

The primary task of ethnography is to make an inventory of the mental tools that have been used by humanity, to see how they have been used, and to understand why they have been used in one way rather than another.

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

The savage mind is not a primitive mind, but a mind that operates according to different principles.

The anthropologist is a man who tries to understand other men, not to judge them.

We are not trying to explain how men think, but how they think without knowing it.

The human mind is a machine for constructing meaning.

The ultimate wisdom is to know that there is no ultimate wisdom.

Beauty is not in the object itself, but in the relationship between the object and the mind that perceives it.

The true voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Man is a being who can only exist by inventing himself.

The most important thing is to learn to see the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.

Every culture is a unique way of organizing the world.

The human mind is a mirror that reflects the world, but it also distorts it.

The essence of humanity is its diversity.

The meaning of life is to give life meaning.

Death is not the end of life, but a part of it.

The human condition is a constant struggle between order and chaos.

Truth is not something that is discovered, but something that is created.