Ernest Gellner - Culture Quotes

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Just as every girl should have a husband, preferably her own, so every culture must have its state, preferably its own.

Ernest Gellner

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

Knowledge which... transcends the bounds, the prejudices and prejudgements of any one society and culture is not an illusion but, on the contrary, a glorious and luminous reality. Just how it was achieved remains subject to debate.

Ernest Gellner