Claude Levi-Strauss

The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions.

Objects are what matter. Only they carry the evidence that throughout the centuries something really happened among human beings.

Civilization has ceased to be that delicate flower which was preserved and painstakingly cultivated in one or two sheltered areas of a soil rich in wild species ... Mankind has opted for monoculture; it is in the process of creating a mass civilization, as beetroot is grown in the mass. Henceforth, man's daily bill of fare will consist only of this one item.

The world began without man, and it will complete itself without him.

Nor must we forget that in science there are no final truths.

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

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.

Our students wanted to know everything: but only the newest theory seemed to them worth bothering with. Knowing nothing of the intellectual achievements of the past, they kept fresh and intact their enthusiasm for 'the latest thing'. Fashion dominated their interest: they valued ideas not for themselves but for the prestige that they could wring from them.