Claude Lévi-Strauss

The anthropologist is a traveler in time as well as space.

The structure of a myth is more important than its content.

The human condition is one of perpetual contradiction.

The incest taboo is the universal foundation of human society.

The concept of 'progress' is a Western illusion.

The anthropologist must be a participant observer, but also maintain a critical distance.

The human mind operates through binary oppositions.

The study of myth is a way of understanding the human mind itself.

The structural method is a tool for understanding the unconscious logic of social phenomena.

The human being is a symbol-making animal.

The purpose of anthropology is to broaden our understanding of what it means to be human.

The human mind is not a blank slate, but is pre-structured.

Myth is a form of intellectual bricolage.

The structural analysis of kinship reveals the universal principles of social organization.

The human mind seeks order in the world.

The anthropologist must be a translator of cultures.

The concept of 'nature' is a cultural construct.

The structural method is a way of revealing the hidden patterns of social life.

Myth is a way of mediating contradictions.

The human mind is a universal structure, but its content is culturally determined.