Jonathan Z. Smith

"Meaning is made, not found."

"We are all anthropologists of our own cultures."

"Religion is not a natural phenomenon; it is a human invention."

"The sacred is created through human activity and imagination."

"Comparison is the means by which we understand anything."

"There is no data that is inherently sacred or profane."

"We study religion because it matters to human beings."

"The map is not the territory; classification is not reality."

"Meaning is imposed on the world, not discovered in it."

"Ritual is a traditional form of language."

"All comparisons are limiting and therefore potentially misleading."

"The study of religion requires intellectual humility."

"History is a discipline of imagination as well as evidence."

"Language shapes how we perceive and categorize the world."

"Universals are known through particulars, never in isolation."

"The scholar must bracket their own assumptions when studying others."

"Meaning emerges from relationships, not from things in themselves."

"To understand something is to locate it in a pattern."

"The act of naming is an act of power."

"Context determines significance in all human endeavors."

"Symbols gain their power through human interpretation."

"The boundaries we draw are always somewhat arbitrary."

"Academic study requires both distance and engagement."

"Difference is the prerequisite for meaning."

"We understand others through strategies of imaginative projection."

"The scholar is always implicated in what they study."

"Tradition is neither fixed nor infinitely malleable."

"Categories are tools for thought, not reflections of essence."

"To study religion seriously is to study human culture itself."

"Representation is always selective and perspectival."