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Quote by James G. Frazer

“From the earliest times man has been engaged in a search for general rules whereby to turn the order of natural phenomena to his own advantage, and in the long search he has scraped together a great hoard of such maxims, some of them golden and some of them mere dross. The true or golden rules constitute the body of applied science which we call the arts; the false are magic.”

Quote by James G. Frazer

Author

James G. Frazer

James G. Frazer was a prominent mythologist, born on January 1, 1854, and died on May 7, 1941. His work, 'The Golden Bough', had a profound impact on the study of Western mythology. more

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“If the test of truth lay in a show of hands or a counting of heads, the system of magic might appeal, with far more reason than the Catholic Church, to the proud motto, 'Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus' [always, everywhere, and by all], as the sure and certain credential of its own infallibility.”

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“To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.”

“I am a plain practical man, not one of your theorists and splitters of hairs and choppers of logic.”

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“In primitive society, where uniformity of occupation is the rule, and the distribution of the community into various classes of workers has hardly begun, every man is more or less his own magician; he practices charms and incantations for his own good and the injury of his enemies.”

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“The slow, the never ending approach to truth consists in perpetually forming and testing hypotheses, accepting those at which at the time seem to fit the facts and rejecting the others.”

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“In point of fact magicians appear to have often developed into chiefs and kings.”

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“With the advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual; and magic; which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal, is gradually relegated to the background and sinks to the level of a black art.”

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“Man has created gods in his own likeness and being himself mortal he has naturally supposed his creatures to be in the same sad predicament.”

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“Yet perhaps no sacrifice is wholly useless which proves there are men who prefer honour to life.”

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“In course of time the slow advance of knowledge, which has dispelled so many cherished illusions, convinced at least the more thoughtful portion of mankind that the alterations of summer and winter, of spring and autumn, were not merely the result of their own magical rites, but that some deeper cause, some mightier power, was at work behind the shifting scenes of nature.”

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