Claude Levi-Strauss Quotes

The man who has everything figured out is probably a fool.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

But if you are going to wear blinders then you do not know the world.

The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about.

The less you know, the more you believe.

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

Denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.

No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it.

Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't -it's human.

There is no bigotry like that of 'free thought' run to seed.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

Being deeply knowledgeable on one subject narrows one's focus and increases confidence, but it also blurs dissenting views until they are no longer visible, thereby transforming data collection into bias confirmation and morphing self-deception into self-assurance.

The worst thing you could ever get is people who think they know everything.

Followers of the occult believe in only what they already know, and in those things that confirm what they have already learned.

Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.

If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind.

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds.

The people with the most ridiculous ideas are always the people who are most certain of them

Superstition is our great enemy, but bigotry is worse.

The habit of an opinion often leads to the complete conviction of its truth, it hides the weaker parts of it, and makes us incapable of accepting the proofs against it.

I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.

For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

That is just the way it is with some people. They will get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.

Be careful of hubris about ideas—especially your own. Remember always, that there is one commonality between all the good ideas that were ever created and all the bad ideas: The people you created them thought that they were good ideas.