Quotes from Mary Douglas

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?

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

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!

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

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

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

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.

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.

Institutions have the pathetic megalomania of the computer whose whole vision of the world is its own program.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

I am sure it must be true that people opt out of the mainstream society because they feel that there are going to be no rewards for them, if they stay.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?

Without the letters of condolence, telegrams of congratulations, and occasional postcards, the friendship of a separated friend is not a social reality. It has no existence without the rites of friendship. Social rituals create a reality which would be nothing without them. It is not too much to say that ritual is more to society than words are to thought. For it is very possible to know something and then find words for it. But it is impossible to have social relations without symbolic acts.