...kültürel çeşitlilik olgusu yadsınır; yaşamımızı düzenleyen normlara uymayan ne varsa kültürün dışına, doğaya atılması yeğlenir. - Claude Lévi-Strauss

The more we claim to discriminate between cultures and customs as good and bad, the more completely do we identify ourselves with those we would condemn. By refusing to consider as human those who seem to us to be the most “savage” or “barbarous” of their representatives, we merely adopt one of their own characteristic attitudes. The barbarian is, first and foremost, the man who believes in barbarism.

while I complain of being able to glimpse no more than the shadow of the past, I may be insensitive to reality as it is taking shape at this very moment, since I have not reached the stage of development at which I would be capable of perceiving it.

A peculiar feature – no doubt a weakness – of my mental make-up is that I find it difficult to concentrate twice on the same subject.