I have never known so much naive conviction allied to greater intellectual poverty.
— Claude Levi-Strauss
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.
The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask 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.
Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing.
The world began without man, and it will complete itself without him.
The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions.
The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions.
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.