{
  "type": "quote",
  "site": {
    "name": "Leafy Quotes",
    "language": "en",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com"
  },
  "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques/while-i-complain",
  "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques/while-i-complain.json",
  "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques/while-i-complain.md",
  "id": "609c10f7-4f68-4711-987f-53382f0ef6d1",
  "slug": "while-i-complain",
  "text": "While I complain of being able to glimpse no more than the shadow of the past, I may be insensitive to reality as it is taking shape at this very moment, since I have not reached the stage of development at which I would be capable of perceiving it. A few hundred years hence, in this same place, another traveller, as despairing as myself, will mourn the disappearance of what I might have seen, but failed to see.",
  "language": "en",
  "author": {
    "name": "Claude Lévi-Strauss",
    "slug": "claude-levi-strauss",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss"
  },
  "book": {
    "title": "Tristes Tropiques",
    "slug": "tristes-tropiques",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques"
  },
  "character": null,
  "chapter": null,
  "chapter_parent": null,
  "page": 43,
  "verified": false,
  "original": null,
  "other_languages": [],
  "topics": [
    {
      "name": "the past",
      "slug": "the-past",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-past"
    },
    {
      "name": "the present moment",
      "slug": "the-present-moment",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/the-present-moment"
    }
  ],
  "source": {
    "name": "Wikiquote",
    "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss#Tristes_Tropiques_(1955)",
    "license": {
      "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
      "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
    }
  },
  "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:57",
  "more_from_book": [
    {
      "id": "fb12382c-2ec8-45a2-b956-27d78afc3364",
      "slug": "the-work-of-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques/the-work-of-the",
      "text": "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.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 123,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "science",
          "slug": "science",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science"
        },
        {
          "name": "art",
          "slug": "art",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/art"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss#Tristes_Tropiques_(1955)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:57"
    },
    {
      "id": "d9414340-d26e-46d8-a73e-aa480498bfd4",
      "slug": "men-can-coexist",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques/men-can-coexist",
      "text": "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.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 149,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "human nature",
          "slug": "human-nature",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature"
        },
        {
          "name": "equality",
          "slug": "equality",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/equality"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss#Tristes_Tropiques_(1955)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:57"
    },
    {
      "id": "c735846f-4533-40a5-ae9c-929842de9594",
      "slug": "in-the-case",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/claude-levi-strauss/tristes-tropiques/in-the-case",
      "text": "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.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 95,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "America",
          "slug": "america",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/america"
        },
        {
          "name": "cities",
          "slug": "cities",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/cities"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss#Tristes_Tropiques_(1955)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:57"
    }
  ]
}