James G. Frazer Quotes About Mankind

Quotes about: Mankind

• The man of science, like the man of letters, is too apt to view mankind only in the abstract, selecting in his consideration only a single side of our complex and many-sided being.

  James G. Frazer

  Men, Views, Two Sides

• The old notion that the savage is the freest of mankind is the reverse of the truth. He is a slave, not indeed to a visible master, but to the past, to the spirits of his dead forefathers, who haunt his steps from birth to death, and rule him with a rod of iron.

  James G. Frazer

  Past, Iron, Savages

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

• In course of time the slow advance of knowledge, which has dispelled so many cherished illusions, convinced at least the more thoughtful portion of mankind that the alterations of summer and winter, of spring and autumn, were not merely the result of their own magical rites, but that some deeper cause, some mightier power, was at work behind the shifting scenes of nature.

  James G. Frazer

  Summer, Spring, Autumn

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

• If mankind had always been logical and wise, history would not be a long chronicle of folly and crime.

  James G. Frazer

  Wise, Long, Crime

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

• Yet it would be unfair to the generality of our kind to ascribe to their intellectual and moral weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from their primitive patterns. For it should not be forgotten that by their glorification of poverty and celibacy both these religions struck straight at the root not merely of civil society but of human existence. The blow was parried by the wisdom or the folly of the vast majority of mankind, who refused to purchase a chance of saving their souls with the certainty of extinguishing the species.

  James G. Frazer

  Buddhism, Blow, Roots

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