List of Claude Levi-Strauss Quotes

All The Essentials Of Humanity's Artistic Treasures Can Be Found In New York.

[serialism] Is Like A Sailless Ship, Driven Out To Sea By Its Captain, Who Has Grown Tired Of Its Being Used Only As A Pontoon, And Who Is Privately Convinced That By Subjecting Life Aboard To The Rules Of An Elaborate Protocol, He Will Prevent The Crew From Thinking Nostalgically Either Of Their Home Port Or Of Their Ultimate Destination.…

I Hate Travelling And Explorers

How Can My Old Photographs Fail To Create In Me A Feeling Of Emptiness And Sorrow? They Make Me Acutely Aware That This Second Deprivation Will Be Final This Time.

There Is One Fact That Can Be Established. The Only Phenomenon Which, Always And In All Parts Of The World, Seems To Be Linked With The Appearance Of Writing

The Musical Emotion Springs Precisely From The Fact That At Each Moment The Composer Withholds Or Adds More Or Less Than The Listener Anticipates On The Basis Of A Pattern That He Thinks He Can Guess, But That He Is Incapable Of Wholly Divining. . . .

[photography] Remains Servile To A Thoughtless Vision Of The World... As The Term Snapshot Suggests, Photography Seizes The Moment And Exhibits It.

The Police Are Not Entrusted With A Mission Which Differentiates Them From Those They Serve. Being Unconcerned With Ultimate Purposes, They Are Inseparable From The Persons And Interests Of Their Masters, And Shine With Their Reflected Glory.

Not Only Does A Journey Transport Us Over Enormous Distances, It Also Causes Us To Move A Few Degrees Up Or Down In The Social Scale. It Displaces Us Physically And Also For Better Or For Worse Takes Us Out Of Our Class Context, So That The Colour And Flavour Of Certain Places Cannot Be Dissociated From The Always Unexpected Social Level On Which We Find Ourselves In Experiencing Them.

These Facts Make The Creator Of Music A Being Like The Gods, And Make Music Itself The Supreme Mystery Of Human Knowledge.

In The Case Of European Towns, The Passing Of Centuries Provides An Enhancement; In The Case Of American Towns, The Passing Of Years Brings Degeneration. It Is Not Simply That They Have Been Newly Built; They Were Built So As To Be Renewable As Quickly As They Were Put Up, That Is, Badly.

The Only Phenomenon With Which Writing Has Always Been Concomitant Is The Creation Of Cities And Empires, That Is The Integration Of Large Numbers Of Individuals Into A Political System, And Their Grading Into Castes Or Classes. It Seems To Have Favored The Exploitation Of Human Beings Rather Than Their Enlightenment.