Edmund Leach Quotes & Sayings

Truth is a totality, the sum of many overlapping partial images. History, on the other hand, sacrifices totality in the interest of continuity. — Edmund Leach

Men do not have to cook their food; they do so for symbolic reasons to show they are men and not beasts. — Edmund Leach

How can a modern anthropologist embark upon a generalization with any hope of arriving at a satisfactory conclusion? By thinking of the organizational ideas that are present in any society as a mathematical pattern. — Edmund Leach

The violence in the world comes about because we human beings are forever creating barriers between men who are like us and men who are not like us. — Edmund Leach

Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents. — Edmund Leach