The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions. Claude Levi-Strauss More Quotes by Claude Levi-Strauss More Quotes From Claude Levi-Strauss I can't help thinking that science would be more appealing if it had no practical use. Claude Levi-Strauss usewould-bethinking In the old days, people used to risk their lives in India or in the Americas in order to bring back products which now seem to us to have been of comically little worth, such as brazilwood and pepper, which added a new range of sense experience to a civilization which had never suspected its own insipidity... From these same lands our modern Marco Polos now bring back the moral spices of which our society feels an increasing need as it is conscious of sinking further into boredom, but that this time they take the form of photographs, books, and travelers tales. Claude Levi-Strauss landorderbook I hate travelling and explorers Claude Levi-Strauss explorersi-hatehate 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. . . . Claude Levi-Strauss musicalspringthinking [Photography] remains servile to a thoughtless vision of the world... As the term snapshot suggests, photography seizes the moment and exhibits it. Claude Levi-Strauss snapshotsvisionphotography 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. Claude Levi-Strauss policeshiningpurpose Teaching and research are not to be confused with training for a profession. Their greatness and their misfortune is that they are a refuge or a mission. Claude Levi-Strauss confusedgreatnessteaching All the essentials of humanity's artistic treasures can be found in New York. Claude Levi-Strauss treasurehumanitynew-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.… Claude Levi-Strauss tiredhomethinking These facts make the creator of music a being like the gods, and make music itself the supreme mystery of human knowledge. Claude Levi-Strauss mysteryhumansfacts 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. Claude Levi-Strauss Since music is a language with some meaning at least for the immense majority of mankind, although only a tiny minority of people are capable of formulating a meaning in it, and since it is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man, a mystery that all the various disciplines come up against and which holds the key to their progress. Claude Levi-Strauss The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions. Claude Levi-Strauss
