Edmund Leach

"We live within narratives we have collectively constructed."

"The interpretation of culture requires a willingness to be transformed."

"Society is a system of differences, not a collection of things."

"Meaning is generated through opposition and complementarity."

"The sacred emerges wherever humans have drawn a boundary."

"To understand ritual, we must understand what it denies as much as what it affirms."

"The self is always multiple, always in process."

"Language does not describe reality; it constructs it."

"The paradox is not a problem to be solved but a feature to be embraced."

"All anthropology is ultimately about the anthropologist's own culture."

"The concept of kinship reveals the hidden logic of society."

"Meaning requires difference; identity requires opposition."

"We are beings who must create meaning in order to survive."

"The structure of myth mirrors the structure of social relations."

"Understanding requires the courage to be misunderstood."

"All symbols are arbitrary, yet all symbols are necessary."

"The boundary between truth and fiction is drawn by society, not by nature."

"Ritual is time made sacred through human action."

"The study of others is always a study of oneself."

"Meaning emerges in the spaces between things."

"Society creates the distinctions that allow it to function."

"The person is a social construct, yet no less real for being so."

"Understanding culture means learning to think in new categories."

"All society is held together by a web of reciprocal obligations."

"The sacred is what we collectively agree to treat as sacred."

"To interpret is not to explain but to translate."

"The anthropologist must learn to hold contradictions in mind."