Claude Lévi-Strauss - Mankind Quotes

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Civilization has ceased to be that delicate flower which was preserved and painstakingly cultivated in one or two sheltered areas of a soil rich in wild species... Mankind has opted for monoculture; it is in the process of creating a mass civilization, as beetroot is grown in the mass. Henceforth, man's daily bill of fare will consist only of this one item.

Claude Lévi-Strauss

Journeys, those magic caskets full of dreamlike promises, will never again yield up their treasures untarnished... The first thing we see as we travel around the world is our own filth, thrown into the face of mankind.

Claude Lévi-Strauss

The order and harmony of the Western world, its most famous achievement, and a laboratory in which structures of a complexity as yet unknown are being fashioned, demand the elimination of a prodigious mass of noxious by-products which now contaminate the globe. The first thing we see as we travel round the world is our own filth, thrown into the face of mankind.

Claude Lévi-Strauss