“ideas generate action when they are believed regardless of whether they are true or not in our opinion”
— Patricia Crone
“It is probably safe to say that in strongly hierarchical societies the only people to whom something approaching nationalist sentiments can be attributed in pre-modern times is the ruling elite, and then only at times.”
— Patricia Crone
“we are here confronted with an irreducible oddity about all human societies: all are strung around figments of the human imagination.”
— Patricia Crone
“One can be deeply influenced by people to whom one is utterly hostile”
— Patricia Crone