Mary Douglas Quotes

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Mary Douglas

Profession : Scientist

Birth : March 25, 1921

Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality, and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching, to love their neighbors, then they would put jealousy and frustration aside?

Mary Douglas

Since 1970, relationships can be more volatile, jobs more ephemeral, geographical mobility more intensified, stability of marriage weaker.

Mary Douglas

If people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in piety. A chilling thought. Or funny.

Mary Douglas

If you want to change the culture, you will have to start by changing the organization.

Mary Douglas

I am convinced that living in an enclave shapes the personality, and living alone shapes the personality too.

Mary Douglas

It seems true that the growth of science and secularism made organized Christianity feel under threat.

Mary Douglas

An escalating, violent tit-for-tat may lead to terrorism.

Mary Douglas

What did our nation ever do to provoke these madly vicious enemies? What is seen as injustice in one place is seen as just requital in the other.

Mary Douglas

The natural response of the old-timers is to build a strong moral wall against the outside. This is where the world starts to be painted in black and white, saints inside, and sinners outside the wall.

Mary Douglas

Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in the way of coordination.

Mary Douglas

The theory of cultural bias... is the idea that a culture is based on a particular form of organization. It can't be transplanted except to another variant of that organization.

Mary Douglas

Real equality is immensely difficult to achieve, it needs continual revision and monitoring of distributions. And it does not provide buffers between members, so they are continually colliding or frustrating each other.

Mary Douglas

Hierarchy works well in a stable environment.

Mary Douglas

Enclave life becomes very tense, Even when they do elect a leader, the factions remain, with the threat of splitting off.

Mary Douglas

Some scholars have been arguing that a civilizational clash between organized religions is the next step in human history.

Mary Douglas

Mormons... are so strong, they can handle wealth, they are confident. I think it is because they are not bogged down by rules for equality, but have a firmly defined system of relative status and responsible command.

Mary Douglas

Islam is in principle egalitarian, and has always had problems with power.

Mary Douglas

It's unlikely that the organized religions will get more sectarian... or is it? I am not at all sure.

Mary Douglas

Every year the progress of advanced capitalist society makes our population consist of more and more isolates. This is because of the infrastructure of the economy, especially electronic communications.

Mary Douglas

I have increasingly, over the years, felt that religion today does our civilization more harm than good.

Mary Douglas