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Levi Strauss Quotes

Browse 6 quotes about Levi Strauss.

Levi Strauss Quotes

“It used to be the Right that was pessimistic while the Left was unfailingly optimistic. Today on the Right it's 'sunrise' neoliberalism and, on the Left, the Tristes Tropiques. If it is Italian terrorism's ambition to destabilize the state, then it is absurd: the state is already so nonexistent that it would be a joke to try and kill it off any more. Or else it is fuelled by the perverse desire to do too much which might lead to law and order and the state becoming more stable, or at least being perpetually reestablished, fragile as they are. Perhaps that is the terrorists' dream. They long for an immortal enemy. Since if it no longer exists, it is much more difficult to destroy it. Tautologies like these really are the genuine article. But terrorism is tautological. And its ultimate lesson is of the order of the syllogism: if the State really existed, terrorism would make political sense. Since it manifestly does not, that proves the State doesn't exist.”

“Freudian psychoanalytical theory is a mythology that answers pretty well to Levi-Strauss's descriptions. It brings some kind of order into incoherence; it, too, hangs together, makes sense, leaves no loose ends, and is never (but never) at a loss for explanation. In a state of bewilderment it may therefore bring comfort and relief.... give its subject a new and deeper understanding of his own condition and of the nature of his relationship to his fellow men. A mythical structure will be built up around him which makes sense and is believable-in, regardless of whether or not it is true.”

“In Colma, a suburb of San Francisco, California there's a proposal pending to tax . . . the dead. If proponents get their way, grave sites will be taxed $5 dollars - per grave, per year - for eternity. In Colma the dead outnumber the living by a ratio of roughly 1000-to-1, including such notables as: Wyatt Earp, Levi Strauss, and William Randolph Hearst. And they, apparently, haven't paid their fair share. For liberals, when it comes to taxes . . . nothing is sacred.”