Edmund Leach quotes

Edmund Leach quotes

last updated: November 28, 2023

“Men do not have to cook their food; they do so for symbolic reasons to show they are men and not beasts.”
-- Edmund Leach

Source : Edmund Leach (1989). “Claude Levi-Strauss”, p.102, University of Chicago Press

#Men Quotes #Beast Quotes #Reason Quotes
“The violence in the world comes about because we human beings are forever creating barriers between men who are like us and men who are not like us.”
-- Edmund Leach

#Men Quotes #Creating Quotes #Forever Quotes
“Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.”
-- Edmund Leach

Source : BBC Reith Lectures, 1967, in 'Listener' 30 November 1967

#Secret Quotes #Privacy Quotes #Source Quotes
“How can a modern anthropologist embark upon a generalization with any hope of arriving at a satisfactory conclusion? By thinking of the organizational ideas that are present in any society as a mathematical pattern.”
-- Edmund Leach

#Hope Quotes #Thinking Quotes #Ideas Quotes
“Truth is a totality, the sum of many overlapping partial images. History, on the other hand, sacrifices totality in the interest of continuity.”
-- Edmund Leach

#Sacrifice Quotes #Hands Quotes #Truth Is Quotes

“We always knew how to honor fallen soldiers. They were killed for our sake, they went out on our mission. But how are we to mourn a random man killed in a terrorist attack while sitting in a cafe? How do you mourn a housewife who got on a bus and never returned?”
“The beast faith lives on its own dung.”
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”
“Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God.”
“The mass of mankind are evidently slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts.”
“The misanthrope, as an essentially solitary man, is not a man at all: he must be a beast or a god...”
“Still, not much of a reason to live, is it? The fear of being punished for killing yourself.”

Source : A.J. Hartley, David Hewson (2014). “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Novel”, p.52
“There are lots of reasons why a woman stays with a man, even when she's given up on changing him and can predict with certainty the shape that the rest of her life with him is going to take.”

Source : A.S.A. Harrison (2013). “The Silent Wife”, p.117, Hachette UK
“Law that shocks equity is reason's murderer.”

Source : Voltaire, Aaron Hill (1797). “Merope: A Tragedy”, p.50
“I think things happened the way they did for a reason”

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