# Quote — Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques

> Freedom is neither a legal invention nor a philosophical conquest, the cherished possession of civilizations more valid than others because they alone have been able to create or preserve it. It is the outcome of an objective relationship between the individual and the space he occupies, between the consumer and the resources at his disposal.

- Author: [Claude Lévi-Strauss](https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss.md)
- Book: [Tristes Tropiques](https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques.md)
- Page: 148
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss#Tristes_Tropiques_(1955)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques/freedom-is-neither

## More from this book

> The work of the painter, the poet or the musician, like the myths and symbols of the savage, ought to be seen by us, if not as a superior form of knowledge, at least as the most fundamental and the only one really common to us all; scientific thought is merely the sharp point — more penetrating because it has been whetted on the stone of fact, but at the cost of some loss of substance — and its effectiveness is to be explained by its power to pierce sufficiently deeply for the main body of the tool to follow the head.

p. 123 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques/the-work-of-the.md)

> Men can coexist on condition that they recognize each other as being all equally, though differently, human, but they can also coexist by denying each other a comparable degree of humanity, and thus establishing a system of subordination.

p. 149 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques/men-can-coexist.md)

> In the case of European towns, the passing of centuries provides an enhancement; in the case of American towns, the passing of years brings degeneration. It is not simply that they have been newly built; they were built so as to be renewable as quickly as they were put up, that is, badly.

p. 95 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques/in-the-case.md)