Theodor Mommsen

Quotes

• “The ancient boundary of Italy on the north was not the Alps but the Apennines.”
• “All power, as well as all the impotence of democracy is based on faith”
• “The czech skull is impervious to reason, but it is scuceptible to blows.”
• “..personal credit was guaranteed in the most summary and extravagant fashion; for the law entitled the creditor to treat his insolvent debtor like a thief, and granted to him in sober earnest by legislative enactment what Shylock, half in jest, stipulated for from his mortal enemy, guarding indeed by special clauses the point as to cutting off too much more carefully than did the Jew.”
• “[the] qualities -those of good soldiers but bad citizens - explain the historical fact, that the celts have shaken states everywhere,but founded none.”
• “In Etruria.. the nation stagnated and decayed in political helplessness and indolent opulence, a theological monopoly in the hands of the nobility, stupid fatalism, wild and meaningless mysticism, the arts of soothsaying and mendicant priestcraft gradually developed themselves, till they reached the height at which we afterwards find them.”

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