The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions.

Meaning of the quote

The scientist is not someone who just has all the answers. Instead, the scientist is someone who asks good questions to try to find the answers. They don't just know everything already, but they are curious and want to learn more by asking questions.

About Claude Levi-Strauss

Claude Levi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthropology at the College de France between 1959 and 1982, was elected a member of the Academie francaise in 1973 and was a member of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris.

More about the author

More quotes from Claude Levi-Strauss

The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions.

Claude Levi-Strauss

French anthropologist and ethnologist (1908-2009)

The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions.

Claude Levi-Strauss

French anthropologist and ethnologist (1908-2009)

Our system is the height of absurdity, since we treat the culprit both as a child, so as to have the right to punish him, and as an adult, in order to deny him consolation.

Claude Levi-Strauss

French anthropologist and ethnologist (1908-2009)

Just as the individual is not alone in the group, nor any one in society alone among the others, so man is not alone in the universe.

Claude Levi-Strauss

French anthropologist and ethnologist (1908-2009)

The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions.

Claude Levi-Strauss

French anthropologist and ethnologist (1908-2009)

I have never known so much naive conviction allied to greater intellectual poverty.

Claude Levi-Strauss

French anthropologist and ethnologist (1908-2009)

The world began without man, and it will complete itself without him.

Claude Levi-Strauss

French anthropologist and ethnologist (1908-2009)

Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing.

Claude Levi-Strauss

French anthropologist and ethnologist (1908-2009)

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.

Claude Levi-Strauss

French anthropologist and ethnologist (1908-2009)