Mary Douglas

"The sacred is the social made transcendent."

"Meaning requires the stability of categories."

"Food is a language we speak with our bodies."

"What we find disgusting defines our humanity."

"Society is a system of mutual surveillance and consent."

"The primitive mind is a projection of Western anxiety."

"Ritual is the grammar through which we speak meaning."

"Every classification system is also a hierarchy."

"We create order through the systematic exclusion of chaos."

"The body is never simply a biological entity."

"Symbols work because we agree they work."

"What seems pure is always already contaminated."

"Society requires shared definitions of danger."

"The study of dirt is the study of order."

"Meaning emerges from the arrangement of categories."

"Ritual prevents the dissolution of social meaning."

"We are the rituals we perform."

"The sacred and profane dance together in every culture."

"Anthropology is the art of making the familiar strange."

"Every culture asks what should be together and what apart."

"The body is a text written in the language of culture."

"Order is always provisional and contested."

"We protect society by protecting its categories."

"Purity is the enemy of change; we must embrace the messiness of social life."

"The body is not just a biological entity; it is a social construct."

"Classification systems reveal the hidden anxieties of a culture."

"What we call natural is often profoundly cultural."

"Symbols gain their power from collective agreement and shared meaning."

"Dirt is only matter out of place."

"The sacred and the profane are not opposites but categories we create."