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To live in a Western country is to live in a society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions. This is no less true for Jews or Muslims than it is for Catholics or Protestants. Two thousand years on from the birth of Christ, it does not require a belief that he rose from the dead to be stamped by the formidable – indeed the inescapable – influence of Christianity.

— Tom Holland Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (2019)

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More quotes by Tom Holland

Any attempt to extrapolate from the minimal evidence available a thesis as to Athelstan’s sexuality would be as anachronistic as it was nugatory.

Athelstan: The Making of England (2016)

Favours and the threat of force: such, as they had ever been, were the essence of successful kingship.

Athelstan: The Making of England (2016)

Rare was the royal genealogy that had not born witness to the fecundity of Woden.

Athelstan: The Making of England (2016)

Estates brought Edward wealth, which enabled him to display generosity to those who support he needed; military commands had given him experience in war, without which no king could hope to maintain his rule.

Athelstan: The Making of England (2016)

That a union as long-lasting as that of Great Britain might fray can hardly help but serve as a reminder that the joining of different peoples in a shared sense of identity is not something easily achieved and maintained.

Athelstan: The Making of England (2016)

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Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

George Bernard Shaw Saint Joan (1923)

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence, from Jerusalem, of a lunatic asylum.

Havelock Ellis

Christianity offers reasons for not fearing death or the universe, and in so doing it fails to teach adequately the virtue of courage.

Bertrand Russell Education and the Social Order (1932)

Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law [this quote is referring to English Common Law].

Thomas Jefferson Vol. 1 Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law (1764)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Tom Holland (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.