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Pretensions to moral superiority are devastatingly destructive.

Mary Douglas

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Mary Douglas
Age: 86 †
Born: 1921
Born: March 25
Died: 2007
Died: May 16
Anthropologist
University Teacher
Writer
San Remo
Dame Mary Douglas
Margaret Mary Tew
Superiority
Destructive
Moral
Devastatingly
Pretensions
Pretension

More quotes by Mary Douglas

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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?
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Hierarchy works well in a stable environment.
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When we are reflecting on terrorism we can grieve for many things we do and have done.
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It is very reasonable to worry about the harm done by organized religion, and to prefer looser and more private arrangements.
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Institutions have the pathetic megalomania of the computer whose whole vision of the world is its own program.
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The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting.
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If you want to change the culture, you will have to start by changing the organization.
Mary Douglas
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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.
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Any great organization can go through sectarian phases.
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The human body is always treated as an image of society.
Mary Douglas
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Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day.
Mary Douglas
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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.
Mary Douglas
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Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in the way of coordination.
Mary Douglas
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If people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in piety. A chilling thought. Or funny.
Mary Douglas
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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!
Mary Douglas
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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.
Mary Douglas
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Where there is dirt there is system. Dirt is the byproduct of a systematic ordering and classification of matter.
Mary Douglas
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I have increasingly, over the years, felt that religion today does our civilization more harm than good.
Mary Douglas
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Since 1970, relationships can be more volatile, jobs more ephemeral, geographical mobility more intensified, stability of marriage weaker.
Mary Douglas
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I am convinced that living in an enclave shapes the personality, and living alone shapes the personality too.
Mary Douglas