Mary Douglas Quotes

Yes, disappointment over perceived unfairness, injustice, promises not kept, tends to go hand in hand with increasing prosperity. Expectations are dashed. What can I say!

Without that assured American largesse Israel would have been obliged to come to an accommodation with her neighbours.

When we are reflecting on terrorism we can grieve for many things we do and have done.

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.

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.

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.

The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting.

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

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

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?

Pretensions to moral superiority are devastatingly destructive.

Our technological infrastructure alienates us from each other. No need to form a workplace community, everybody there will be out in a year or two, and so will you, looking for a better place.

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.

Just in our lifetime our society has become looser and more private, it becomes extremely difficult to hold to any permanent commitment whatever, least of all to organized religion.

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

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

It is very reasonable to worry about the harm done by organized religion, and to prefer looser and more private arrangements.

It is only partly true that religion does more harm than good in society. The community makes God into the image it wants, vengeful, or milky sweet, or scrupulously just, and so on.

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

Inside a religious body you get sects and hierarchies, inside an information network you get bazaars and cathedrals, it is the same, call them what you like. They survive by pointing the finger of blame at each other.