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Edmund Leach Quotes

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

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

Edmund Leach
Men, Beast, Reason
Edmund Leach (1989). “Claude Levi-Strauss”, p.102, University of Chicago Press

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, Math, Thinking

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
Secret, Privacy, Source
BBC Reith Lectures, 1967, in 'Listener' 30 November 1967

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, Creating, Forever

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, Hands, Truth Is

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