Mary Douglas

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

“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.”

“Some scholars have been arguing that a civilizational clash between organized religions is the next step in human history.”

“Hierarchy works well in a stable environment.”

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

“Without that assured American largesse Israel would have been obliged to come to an accommodation with her neighbours.”

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

“Enclave life becomes very tense, Even when they do elect a leader, the factions remain, with the threat of splitting off.”

“Inside a religious body you get sects and hierarchies, inside an information network you get bazaars and cathedrals, it is the same, call them what you like. They survive by pointing the finger of blame at each other.”

“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.”

“Every year the progress of advanced capitalist society makes our population consist of more and more isolates. This is because of the infrastructure of the economy, especially electronic communications.”

“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?”

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

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

“What did our nation ever do to provoke these madly vicious enemies? What is seen as injustice in one place is seen as just requital in the other.”

“Any great organization can go through sectarian phases.”

“Pretensions to moral superiority are devastatingly destructive.”

“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.”

“The theory of cultural bias... is the idea that a culture is based on a particular form of organization. It can't be transplanted except to another variant of that organization.”

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