“It is this which explains nationalism: the principle — so strange and eccentric in the age of agrarian cultural diversity and the 'ethnic' division of labour — that homogeneity of culture is the political bond, that mastery of (and, one should add, acceptability in) a given high culture … is the precondition of political, economic and social citizenship.”

—  Ernest Gellner

Nationalism (1997)

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Ernest Gellner 32
Czech anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist 1925–1995

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