Mary Douglas – 14 Quotes

14 Quotes by Mary Douglas

I am convinced that living in an enclave shapes the personality, and living alone shapes the personality too.

– Mary Douglas

If you want to change the culture, you will have to start by changing the organization.

– Mary Douglas

Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in the way of coordination.

– Mary Douglas

Mormons… are so strong, they can handle wealth, they are confident. I think it is because they are not bogged down by rules for equality, but have a firmly defined system of relative status and responsible command.

– Mary Douglas

Real equality is immensely difficult to achieve, it needs continual revision and monitoring of distributions. And it does not provide buffers between members, so they are continually colliding or frustrating each other.

– Mary Douglas

If people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in piety. A chilling thought. Or funny.

– Mary Douglas

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?

– Mary Douglas

Since 1970, relationships can be more volatile, jobs more ephemeral, geographical mobility more intensified, stability of marriage weaker.

– Mary Douglas

I have increasingly, over the years, felt that religion today does our civilization more harm than good.

– Mary Douglas

It is only partly true that religion does more harm than good in society. The community makes God into the image it wants, vengeful, or milky sweet, or scrupulously just, and so on.

– Mary Douglas

It is very reasonable to worry about the harm done by organized religion, and to prefer looser and more private arrangements.

– Mary Douglas

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.

– Mary Douglas

It seems true that the growth of science and secularism made organized Christianity feel under threat.

– Mary Douglas

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