“All this points to the importance of social memory; as the example of the relationship between modern and ancient Greeks shows, ethnies are constituted, not by lines of physical descent, but by the sense of continuity, shared memory and collective destiny, i. e. by lines of cultural affinity embodied in myths, memories, symbols and values retained by a given cultural unit of population.”

—  Anthony D. Smith

Source: Nationalism and Modernism (1998), p. 192.

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Anthony D. Smith20
British academic 1939–2016

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