Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. II : The Fellow-Craft, p. 43
Context: Remember, that though life is short, Thought and the influences of what we do or say, are immortal; and that no calculus has yet pretended to ascertain the law of proportion between cause and effect. The hammer of an English blacksmith, smiting down an insolent official, led to a rebellion which came near being a revolution. The word well spoken, the deed fitly done, even by the feeblest or humblest, cannot help but have their effect. More or less, the effect is inevitable and eternal. The echoes of the greatest deeds may die away like the echoes of a cry among the cliffs, and what has been done seem to the human judgment to have been without result. The unconsidered act of the poorest of men may fire the train that leads to the subterranean mine, and an empire be rent by the explosion.
“We seem to move on a thin crust which may at any moment be rent by the subterranean forces slumbering below.”
Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 4, Magic and Religion.
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James Frazer 50
Scottish social anthropologist 1854–1941Related quotes
“All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.”
Source: Little Essays of Love and Virtue http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15687/15687-h/15687-h.htm (1922), Ch. 7
January 25, 1858
Journals (1838-1859)
Anarchist Morality http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/AM/anarchist_moralitytc.html (1890)
Context: The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested — rulers, lawyers, clerics — have carefully enwound her.
She shatters the chains. She subjects to severe criticism all that has been taught her, and lays bare the emptiness of the religious political, legal, and social prejudices amid which she has vegetated. She starts research in new paths, enriches our knowledge with new discoveries, creates new sciences.
But the inveterate enemies of thought — the government, the lawgiver, and the priest — soon recover from their defeat. By degrees they gather together their scattered forces, and remodel their faith and their code of laws to adapt them to the new needs.
EU referendum: Vote Leave in housing appeal to young https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36431474 BBC News (2 June 2016)
2016
“There is a force in the earth which causes the moon to move.”
In Terra inest virtus, quae Lunam del.
Essay dedicated to the Archduke Ferdinand, as quoted in Kepler (1993) by Max Caspar, Sect. II, Ch. 9, p. 110
Speech at Madison Square Garden, October 28, 1940
1940s