Even the recognition of an individual whom we see every day is only possible as the result of an abstract idea of him formed by generalization from his appearances in the past. — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
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… — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
But once a fool always a fool, and the greater the power in his hands the more disastrous is likely to be the use… — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
The man of science, like the man of letters, is too apt to view mankind only in the abstract, selecting in his consideration only… — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the principles… — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
In point of fact magicians appear to have often developed into chiefs and kings. — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
For when a nation becomes civilized, if it does not drop human sacrifices altogether, it at least selects as victims only such wretches as… — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
I am a plain practical man, not one of your theorists and splitters of hairs and choppers of logic. — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
The slow, the never ending approach to truth consists in perpetually forming and testing hypotheses, accepting those at which at the time seem to… — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
The second principle of magic: things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance… — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
The consideration of human suffering is not one which enters into the calculations of primitive man. — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
Some of the old laws of Israel are clearly savage taboos of a familiar type thinly disguised as commands of the Deity. — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
For there are strong grounds for thinking that, in the evolution of thought, magic has preceded religion. — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
If mankind had always been logical and wise, history would not be a long chronicle of folly and crime. — James G. Frazer Copy Share Image
