Patricia Crone

“Most people, and certainly all members of Western civilization, are [...] born into a world which differs radically from that of their ancestors, with the result that most of human history is a closed book to them.”
― Patricia Crone, Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World

“In short, the superhuman beings and laws that petty human beings see as the source of their socio-political organization must do more than simply provide rules. They must also justify those rules, explain why they are good even though they feel uncomfortable, how they are conducive to happiness, indeed why there is so much unhappiness to overcome and why those who live by the rules rarely seem to be any less unhappy than the rest; and this almost invariably involves explaining why the world exists, what humans are doing in it, how their society relates to it, how and why they should go on, or alternatively how and why they ought to get out of it all again. The more complex a society, the more elaborate its belief system will be, obviously because the more variety there is in the human condition, the more there is to explain.”
― Patricia Crone, Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World