Alexis De Tocqueville Quotes by Norman F. Cantor

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“The mindset of antiquity lacked economic science and sociological theory. The ancients did rather well with political narrative, although, except for Thucydides, no first-rate political annalist and analyst emerged from the literary populace. But the ancients never showed a capacity,…

Norman F. Cantor

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“The central government was a despotism tempered by military rebellion and assassination and replacement of one scurvy lot of ruling dynasts by another. But…

Norman F. Cantor

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“A very long time ago, some 2.5 million years B.C., the mother of human species as we know it, our ultimate ancestor, appeared in…

Norman F. Cantor

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“Saint Paul was proud of his Roman citizenship, and his letter to various Christian communities in the empire presupposed an effective communications system that…

Norman F. Cantor

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“In the field of medicine, Galen, the Alexandrian scientist, propounded a view that is still around, nowadays called 'alternative medicine.'It was taught in many…

Norman F. Cantor

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“There was some kind of cultural cause for the decline of the ancient world. It was neither corruption of public spirit nor Christianity. It was due to the rise of the logocentric culture rooted in written text. This engendered, in general, a conservative, backward-looking frame of mind, hostile to critical military and technological innovation. It widened the gap between the…

Norman F. Cantor

“The only clear expression of intellectual dissent from hydraulic despotism occurred in the southern half of the coastal lands of the eastern Mediterranean, called variously Canaan, Palestine, Israel, Judah, and today, Israel again. Here and in a satellite Jewish colony in Iraq, between 800 and 500 B.C., visionaries ("the Prophets") -- namely Amos, Ezekiel, Isaiah (at least two different writers…

Norman F. Cantor

“The German economic historian Fanz Oertel in the 1950s points to another drastic consequence of a slave economy. A slave economy initially allowed an increase of productivity through the invention and use of new machinery. Roman products remained at a simple level and could be reproduced by handicraft. By the fourth century, for example, the robust pottery industry of Greece…

Norman F. Cantor

“The classical heritage as shaped by and filtered through Roman culture had two great flaws. First, it prevented the very rich oral cultures of the ancient Mediterranean from surviving from antiquity into later times. All that was left as creative forces were Greek philosophy and Roman law. These were very substantial cultures but they represented a great narrowing of what…

Norman F. Cantor

“The Gnostics (also called Manichees) postulated that there were two gods -- the Christian God of goodness and light, and an evil anti-God of darkness. This theory proved an easy explanation of why there was evil in the world. It was rejected by Catholic Christianity in favor of the monotheistic view that there was one God who created only goodness.…

Norman F. Cantor

“There is no doubt that to the ancients of circa 100 A.S., games implied bloodshed; but gladiators' hand-to-hand combats to the death featured in…

Norman F. Cantor

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“Christian legend later claimed that Peter also went to Rome and there became head of the Christian community, that is, a bishop. Both Peter and Paul, according to the Catholic version, died as martyrs in the Eternal City. Paul definitely went to Rome, and may have been martyred there. But that Peter, a very devout, timid Jewish fisherman, uneducated, and…

Norman F. Cantor

“In response to [the Philistine] threat [in the ninth century B.C.], the Hebrews could no longer rely on the leadership of 'judges,' ad hoc…

Norman F. Cantor

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