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

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

Anthropology found its Galileo in Rivers, its Newton in Mauss.

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

I hate travelling and explorers

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. . . .

I think that a society cannot live without a certain number of irrational beliefs. They are protected from criticism and analysis because they are irrational.