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.

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

There is today a frightful disappearance of living species, be they plants or animals. And it's clear that the density of human beings has become so great, if I can say so, that they have begun to poison themselves. And the world in which I am finishing my existence is no longer a world that I like.

Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize the immense riches accumulated by the human race. By underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished.

I can't help thinking that science would be more appealing if it had no practical use.

The dogma of cultural relativism is challenged by the very people for whose moral benefit the anthropologists established it in the first place. The complaint the underdeveloped countries advance is not that they are being westernized, but that the westernization is proceeding too slowly.