Claude Levi-Strauss

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact.

Music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out only by few and that it alone among all the languages unites the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable - these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods.

I think that a society cannot live without a certain number of irrational beliefs. They are protected from criticism and analysis because they are irrational.