Jonathan Z. Smith

"We cannot study religion from the inside alone."

"The sacred is always relative, never absolute."

"Comparison is not reductionism; it is the path to understanding."

"Every religion is a response to human concerns."

"Symbols mean what communities make them mean."

"The concept of nature is a human invention."

"Ritual is a way of creating and maintaining order."

"We understand ourselves through our categories."

"The sacred is what we set apart."

"All knowledge is constructed knowledge."

"Religion is fundamentally about meaning."

"Difference generates meaning."

"We are the sum of our classifications."

"To study religion is to study what humans care about."

"The boundary between sacred and profane is a human invention."

"All religions are human religions."

"Cosmology is a map of the human mind."

"We make the world through our categorizations."

"Religion is a human universal, not a natural given."

"The study of religion requires intellectual humility."

"Ritual is the grammar of religion."

"What is sacred varies across cultures and history."

"We cannot understand religion without understanding classification."

"The profane is defined by what is excluded from the sacred."

"All human systems are systems of meaning."

"Religion asks: What is real? What is important? What is good?"

"Comparison reveals both similarity and difference."

"We are creatures of order and chaos both."

"The sacred is always constructed, never natural."

"Meaning is social, not individual."