“Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize — because they set so little store by them — the immense riches accumulated by the human race on either side of the narrow furrow on which they keep their eyes fixed; by underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished.”

—  Claude Lévi-Strauss , book Tristes Tropiques

Source: Tristes Tropiques (1955), Chapter 38 : A Little Glass of Rum, p. 393

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Claude Lévi-Strauss photo
Claude Lévi-Strauss 35
French anthropologist and ethnologist 1908–2009

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