41 Quotes by Mary Douglas

The human body is always treated as an image of society.

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

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

It's unlikely that the organized religions will get more sectarian... or is it? I am not at all sure.

Pretensions to moral superiority are devastatingly destructive.

If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt, we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. This is a very suggestive approach. It implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contrevention of that order. Dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements.

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.

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

Hierarchy works well in a stable environment.