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Magic begins in superstition, and ends in science. ... At every step the history of civilization teaches us how slight and superficial a structure civ...more

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Every civilization is a fruit from the sturdy tree of barbarism, and falls at the greatest distance from its trunk.

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So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him.

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So I should say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief and the undisciplined pursuit of individua...more

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The family is the nucleus of civilization.

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There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present. Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, mo...more

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Civilizations are the generations of the racial soul. As family-rearing, and then writing, bound the generations together, handing down the lore of th...more

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A history of civilization shares the presumptuousness of every philosophical enterprise: it offers the ridiculous spectacle of a fragment expounding t...more