Louis Dumont

"Ideology is invisible to those trapped within it."

"Understanding requires both sympathy and critical distance."

"The sacred and the profane structure all human experience."

"We are both free and constrained by our social world."

"Anthropology reveals what culture conceals."

"Hierarchy is not oppression; it is order."

"The individual is a mask we wear, not our true self."

"Comparison teaches humility before human diversity."

"We cannot escape our own framework, but we can recognize it."

"The study of man begins with the study of the sacred."

"Modern consciousness is peculiar, not universal."

"To know the other, we must become a little other ourselves."

"The holistic approach reveals connections that fragmentation denies."

"Obligation binds society more strongly than interest."

"The profane world is illuminated by the sacred."

"We live in a web of meanings we have not created."

"Anthropology is the study of human possibilities and human limits."

"Ideology speaks in the voice of reason but serves interests."

"Hierarchy provides structure; equality provides fiction."

"Understanding begins where judgment ends."

"The sacred cannot be reduced to the psychological or the social."

"We are all anthropologists of our own culture once we become aware."

"Comparison is both dangerous and necessary."

"The individual is a recent invention of Western ideology."

"To study man is to study the multiplicity of human meanings."

"Obligation and reciprocity create the fabric of society."

"The profane depends on the sacred for coherence."

"We are trapped in our own assumptions until we study others."

"Anthropology teaches us that our way is not the way."

"Hierarchy and equality are not opposites but dimensions of human life."