Edmund Leach

"The study of other cultures is a way of defamiliarizing our own."

"Culture is the name we give to the sum of all human irrationality."

"To become an anthropologist is to agree to live permanently in exile."

"The sacred is simply that which a society has decided to protect from rational analysis."

"Every exchange is a form of communication; economics is the study of what we refuse to communicate."

"We are bound together not by blood but by the fictions we agree to maintain."

"The study of religion reveals that humans need God more than God needs humans."

"What makes societies cohere is not shared beliefs but shared myths."

"The anthropologist's task is to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange."

"Culture is the name we give to our collective madness."

"We are the only animals who can imagine what we are not and then become it."

"The past is always with us, shaping us even as we pretend to transcend it."

"Every ritual is an attempt to compel order upon chaos through symbolic action."

"The anthropologist's task is to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar."

"Culture is not something that exists in the external world; it is something that we carry within ourselves."

"Ritual is a concentrated form of social action that reveals the underlying structure of society."

"Marriage is a contract between two individuals who agree to share their lives, not their identities."

"The meaning of a symbol is not fixed; it changes according to context and interpretation."

"We are all anthropologists of our own culture, though most of us don't realize it."

"The study of kinship is the study of how societies organize human relationships."

"Myth is the language through which societies express their deepest values and anxieties."

"The boundary between the sacred and the profane is always a matter of social convention."

"To understand a society, you must first understand its rituals."

"Language is not merely a tool for communication; it is a reflection of how we think."

"The individual and society are not opposites; they are interdependent."

"Taboos are not arbitrary restrictions; they reflect fundamental social structures."

"All humans are capable of both rationality and irrationality."

"The study of others is ultimately the study of ourselves."

"Social change occurs when the symbols that hold society together lose their power."

"Every culture has its own logic that makes sense from within."