# Quote — Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques

> One must be very naïve or dishonest to imagine that men choose their beliefs independently of their situation.

- 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/one-must-be-very

## 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)