Walter Burkert > Quotes

“What the myth founds is a double existence between the upper world and the underworld: a dimension of death is introduced into life, and a dimension of life is introduced into death.”
― Walter Burkert, Greek Religion

“Culture is not a plant sprouting from its seed in isolation; it is a continuous process of learning guided by curiosity along with practical needs and interests. It grows especially from a willingness to learn from what is 'other', what is strange and foreign.”
― Walter Burkert

“Culture has been defined as a "realized signifying system," a social system characterized by standard forms of communication.”
― Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions

“Art means "to make special" certain objects of perception, producing a characteristic tension between the familiar and the admirable and thus creating new aspects of a potentially common world.”
― Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions

“The first principal characteristic of religion is negative: that is, religion deals with the nonobvious, the unseen, that "which cannot be verified empirically." Protagoras the sophist spoke of the adelótes, the "unclearness" or "nonevidence" of the gods. Religion is manifest in actions and attitudes that do not fulfill immediate practical functions. What is intended and dealt with can- not be seen, or touched, or worked upon in the usual fashion of everyday life.”
― Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions