Patricia Crone

“One can be deeply influenced by people to whom one is utterly hostile”

“we are here confronted with an irreducible oddity about all human societies: all are strung around figments of the human imagination.”

“ideas generate action when they are believed regardless of whether they are true or not in our opinion”

“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.”