He represents an extremely subversive vision with his interest in populations that were disdained. He paid careful attention, not touristically but profoundly, to the human beings on the earth who think differently from us. It’s a respect for others, which is very strong and very moving. He knew that cultural diversity is necessary for cultural creativity, for the future.
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Gilles Clément, as quoted in "100th-Birthday Tributes Pour in for Lévi-Strauss" by Steve Erlanger in The New York Times (28 November 2008)Claude Levi-Strauss
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Cultural pluralism is as important as political and multi- party pluralism. Religious, linguistic and cultural pluralism are vitally important hallmarks of a true democracy. We are against cultural hegemony of any sort. Diversity is a mark of a healthy democracy.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
The discovery of India — what have I discovered? It was presumptuous of me to imagine that I could unveil her and find out what she is today and what she was in the long past. Today she is four hundred million separate individual men and women, each differing from the other, each living in a private universe of thought and feeling. If this is so in the present, how much more so to grasp that multitudinous past of innumerable successions of human beings. Yet something has bound them together and binds them still. India is a geographical and economic entity, a cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads. Overwhelmed again and again her spirit was never conquered, and today when she appears to be a plaything of a proud conqueror, she remains unsubdued and unconquered. About her there is the elusive quality of a legend of long ago; some enchantment seems to have held her mind. She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive.
Jawaharlal Nehru
There is something about human nature that has to be understood, and so … I've shifted my attention from an interest in unity to an interest in creativity.
Jonas Salk
[The] kind of thinking [...] which refuses to make distinctions among artists on the basis of color or nationality or gender, which insists on inclusion rather than exclusion, is hardly fashionable with the current tribalism known as multiculturalism and cultural diversity. But it represents [...] the only kind of thinking that can prepare the way for great art, and builds the path to a reconciled society.
Robert Brustein
In my view, most human beings are innately neither moral nor immoral but rather amoral. They are driven by emotional self-interest and have the potential to be either moral or immoral, depending on what their self-interest dictates, and will be influenced in their choices by emotions and socio-cultural contexts. Circumstances will determine the survival value of humankind’s moral compass in that being highly moral in an immoral environment may be detrimental to one’s survival and vice versa. Indeed, our neuronal architecture is pre-programmed to seek gratification and feel good regardless of the reason. All apparently altruistic behaviour serves self-interest at some level.
Nayef Al-Rodan
Levi-Strauss, Claude
Levi, Eliphas
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