The faith of scientists in the power and truth of mathematics is so implicit that their work has gradually become less and less observation, and more and more calculation.... But the facts which are accepted by virtue of these tests are not actually observed at all.

If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new questions.

Magic, then, is not a method, but a language; it is part and parcel of that greater phenomenon, ritual, which is the language of religion. Ritual is a symbolic transformation of experiences that no other medium can adequately express.

To trace the development of mind from earliest times ... requires ... not a categorical concept, but a functional one.... The most promising operational principle for this purpose is the principle of individuation.

Ritual is the most primitive reflection of serious thought, a slow deposit, as it were, of people's imaginative insight into life.

Art is just as comprehensible as science, but in its own terms.

Religion, even the most primitive and superstitious, is inevitably a beginning of culture. It is not possible without some kind of symbolic expression ... and begets dramatic gesture, dance, and chant.