Claude Levi-Strauss

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

Just as the individual is not alone in the group, nor any one in society alone among the others, so man is not alone in the universe.

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

Not all poisonous juices are burning or bitter nor is everything which is burning and bitter poisonous.

The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions.

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

Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing.

I have never known so much naive conviction allied to greater intellectual poverty.

Scientific knowledge advances haltingly and is stimulated by contention and doubt.

Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize... the immense riches accumulated by the human race. By underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished.

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact.

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.