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Thomas Cahill Quotes (1940-2022)
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About Thomas Cahill
Thomas Cahill (1940 β October 18, 2022) was an American scholar and writer. He is best known for The Hinges of History series, a prospective seven-volume series in which the author recounts formative moments in Western civilization.
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βThey [the Greeks] had become an essentially secular people.β
βFor me, the historian's principal task should be to raise the dead to life.β
βMore than half of all our biblical commentaries between 650 and 850 were written by Irishmen.β
βOnly when we step back can we see that we have been reassembling something that can stand in the wind.β
βIreland is unique in religious history for being the only land into which Christianity was introduced without bloodshed.β
βPatrick... understood that, though Christianity was not inextricably wedded to Roman custom, it could not survive without Roman literacy.β
βThe [Greek] myths were... attemptingβat a deeper levelβto feel the intangible and say the unsayable.β
βThe high abbesses... had the power to heal, ...almost certainly heard confessions, probably ordained clergy, and may even have celebrated Mass.β
βIt is... ironic that, given its subsequent history of Jew-hatred, Christianity should become the vehicle by which Jewish values entered the mainstream.β
βOf the many people's of the earth, the Romans may have had the most boring religion of all. ...basically a businessman's religion of contractual obligations.β
βJust as the Judeo-Christian world had learned the Greek language and internalized Greek categories, the Greco-Roman world gradually abandoned its dying gods and became monotheistic.β
βMore than a billion people in our world today survive on less than $370 a year, while Americans, who constitute five percent of the world's population, purchase fifty percent of its cocaine.β
βWhatever we experience in our day, whatever we hope to learn, whatever we most desire, whatever we set out to find, we see that the Greeks have been there before us, and we meet them on their way back.β
βWhether or not Freud was right when he muttered in exasperation that the Irish were the only people who could not be helped by psychoanalysis, there can be no doubt of one thing: the Irish will never change.β
βLacking cities, Ireland didn't quite see the point of bishops, and gradually these were replaced in importance by abbots andβin a development that would make any self-respecting Roman's blood run coldβabbesses.β
βWhen Donald Rumsfeld, a practical imperialist if ever there was one, took over the Pentagon, he commissioned a study of how ancient empires maintained their hegemony. Might he more profitably study how they lost all they had gained?β
βLatin literature would almost certainly have been lost without the Irish, and illiterate Europe would hardly have developed its great national literatures without the example of the Irish, the first vernacular literature to be written down.β
βThe Greek world will continue in almost constant cultural revolution from the time of Homer to the day Rome brings Greece to its knees in the second century B.C. ...the longest trajectory of fluid development in any society known to history.β
βThough the poems of Homer and his successors were recorded, there will be no Greek reading public till we reach the fifth century B.C. ...There was instead, a hearing public that formed responsive audiences at festivals and contests.β
βThis swaggering behavior has confounded historians, prompting them to wonder if Columbanus was a little off his rocker. But I think we may chalk up this attitude to his Irishness.β
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Thomas Cahill on Dualism
βThe idea of physical resurrection struck them [the Greeks] as ghoulish. ...Matter is the very principle of unintelligibity [or lack of intelligence]. Best to be done with it. For the Jews, who had little of no belief in the immortality of the soul, only salvation in one's body could have any meaning.β
Thomas Cahill on Eucharist
βThe terms of this new religion, though based on Hebrew models, were Greek terms. Christ, EkklΔsia (Church), Baptism, Eucharist, AgapΔ (Lovingkindness)βall of Christianity's central words were Greek words. Christian patterns of thought... could indeed be traced to their origins in the coastal Levant, but they often shone with a Greek patina.β
Thomas Cahill on Direct democracy
βAthenian democracy was different from the much later American form, not only because it was the expression of a single city-state but because it was a direct, rather than a representative democracy. To us, looking backwards, it may seem imprudent to invite all citizens to vote on all major initiatives, but Solon was right to appreciate that no Athenian freeman could allow himself to be left out of anything.β
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Thomas Cahill on Saint Patrick
βPatrick... understood that, though Christianity was not inextricably wedded to Roman custom, it could not survive without Roman literacy.β
About Thomas Cahill
Thomas Cahill (1940 β October 18, 2022) was an American scholar and writer. He is best known for The Hinges of History series, a prospective seven-volume series in which the author recounts formative moments in Western civilization.