Jonathan Z. Smith

"Religion is not about believing things. It is about belonging to things."

"The real issue is not belief, but belonging."

"Comparison is a fundamental cognitive tool."

"There is no data that is absolutely sacred."

"The notion of the sacred is the notion of difference."

"Ritual is not a failed technology."

"To be human is to be involved in constant comparison."

"Map is not territory, model is not reality."

"We cannot escape the comparison."

"The scholar must be a generalist in an age of specialists."

"All things are given their meaning by their place in a system of classification."

"Cosmology is grammar."

"The sacred affirms difference; the profane denies it."

"There is no natural religion; all religion is cultural."

"The academic study of religion requires an outsider's view."

"Difference is the fundamental category of religion."

"We are creatures of taxonomy."

"The map is a form of power."

"What makes something sacred is the group's designation of it as such."

"All human categories are provisional."

"Ritual creates order out of chaos."

"The study of religion is the study of human meaning-making."

"Nothing is inherently sacred or profane."

"Classification systems reveal what we value."

"The scholar's task is to understand the other without judgment."

"Religious systems are systems of classification."

"We live by our categories."

"The notion of the natural is itself a cultural construct."

"All boundaries are drawn by humans for human purposes."

"Understanding requires comparative thinking."