Claude Lévi-Strauss

The first task of the anthropologist is to exorcise the notion of culture.

Man is born with a need to classify, to organize the world around him.

Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of memory to the self.

The musical scale is a sort of frozen melody.

I hate the idea of getting in a box. As soon as you get in, you want to get out.

The aim of anthropology is to understand the human condition in all its diversity.

Symbols are the language of the unconscious.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

The primitive mind is not a primitive version of our own.

In the realm of the unconscious, the primitive is contemporary with the civilized.

Art is a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious.

The true wealth of a nation lies in its cultural diversity.

I have never been able to believe in the existence of a single human nature common to all men.

The anthropologist must be both participant and observer.

Memory is the only paradise from which we cannot be expelled.

The structure of myth is like a musical score.

Civilization is the art of living together in harmony with differences.

The brain is always more ingenious than the machine.

Exile is the condition of the intellectual.

Kinship is the grammar of culture.