Quote

The essence of religion is inertia the essence of science is change. It is the function of the one to preserve, it is the function of the other to improve. If, as in Egypt, they are firmly chained together, either science will advance, in which case the religion will be altered, or the religion will preserve its purity, and science will congeal.

William Winwood Reade

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William Winwood Reade
Age: 37 †
Born: 1838
Born: January 1
Died: 1875
Died: January 1
Anthropologist
Explorer
Historian
Philosopher
William Reade
Religion
Preserves
Congeal
Science
Purity
Chained
Change
Improve
Inertia
Together
Function
Altered
Essence
Firmly
Case
Egypt
Cases
Preserve
Either
Advance

More quotes by William Winwood Reade

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What a state of society is this in which freethinker is a term of abuse, and in which doubt is regarded as sin?
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Open the book of universal history at what period we may, it is always the India trade which is the cause of internal industry and foreign negotiation.
William Winwood Reade
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Men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels, rather than elevated apes.
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One book that has influenced the writer very strongly is Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man...It is still an extraordinarily inspiring presentation of human history as one consistent process.
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Our enlightened posterity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep, just as we look upon cannibals.
William Winwood Reade
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Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never doubts at all.
William Winwood Reade
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One fact must be familiar to all those who have any experience of human nature - a sincerely religious man is often an exceedingly bad man.
William Winwood Reade
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As for the system of the Commune, which makes it impossible for a man to rise or fall, it is merely the old caste system revived if it could be put into force, all industry would be disheartened, emulation would cease, and mankind would go to sleep.
William Winwood Reade
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If we look into ourselves we discover propensities which declare that our intellects have arisen from a lower form could our minds be made visible we should find them tailed.
William Winwood Reade
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As a single atom man is an enigma: as a whole he is a mathematical problem. As an individual he is a free agent, as a species the offspring of necessity.
William Winwood Reade
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A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.
William Winwood Reade
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The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food. Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.
William Winwood Reade
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It is a sure criterion of the civilisation of ancient Egypt that the soldiers did not carry arms except on duty, and that the private citizens did not carry them at all.
William Winwood Reade
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In Europe itself it is not probable that war will ever absolutely cease until science discovers some destroying force so simple in its administration, so horrible in its effects, that all art, all gallantry, will be at an end, and battles will be massacres which the feelings of mankind will be unable to endure.
William Winwood Reade
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It may safely be asserted that the art of war will soon be reduced to a simple question of expenditure and credit, and that the largest purse will be the strongest arm.
William Winwood Reade
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A day will come when the European god of the nineteenth century will be classed with the gods of Olympus and the Nile.
William Winwood Reade
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Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.
William Winwood Reade
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To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted and that it should be subservient to faith, will inevitably fall.
William Winwood Reade
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We live between two worlds we soar in the atmosphere we creep upon the soil we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of quadrupeds. There can be but one explanation of this fact. We are passing from the animal into a higher form, and the drama of this planet is in its second act.
William Winwood Reade
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Reade was an emancipating writer because he seemed to speak as man to man to resolve history into an intelligible pattern in which there was no need for miracles. Even if he was wrong, he was grown-up.
William Winwood Reade