The custom of burning a beneficent god is too foreign to later modes of thought to escape misinterpretation.

- James G. Frazer

By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of natur…

- James G. Frazer

The advance of knowledge is an infinite progression towards a goal that ever recedes.

- James G. Frazer

For when a nation becomes civilized, if it does not drop human sacrifices altogether, it at least selects as victims only such wretches as would be p…

- James G. Frazer

Small minds cannot grasp great ideas; to their narrow comprehension, their purblind vision, nothing seems really great and important but themselves.

- James G. Frazer

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

- James G. Frazer

With the advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual; and magic; which once ranked with them a…

- James G. Frazer

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.

- James G. Frazer

The question whether our conscious personality survives after death has been answered by almost all races of men in the affirmative.

- James G. Frazer