# Quote — Olaf Stapledon, Last And First Men

> Religion finally severed the unity which all willed but none could trust. An heroic nation of monotheists sought to impose its faith on a vaguely pantheist world. For the first and last time the Second Men stumbled into a world-wide civil war; and just because the war was religious it developed a brutality hitherto unknown.

- Author: [Olaf Stapledon](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon.md)
- Book: [Last And First Men](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men.md)
- Page: 110
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Olaf_Stapledon#Last_and_First_Men_(1930)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/religion-finally-severed

## More from this book

> Yet though time is cyclic, it is not repetitive; there is no other time within which it can repeat itself.

p. 229 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/yet-though-time.md)

> [T]his is the goal of all living, that the cosmos may be known, and admired, and that it may be crowned with further beauties. Nowhere and at no time, so far as we can tell, at least within our own galaxy, has the adventure reached further than in ourselves. And in us, what has been achieved is but a minute beginning. But it is a real beginning.

p. 231 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/t-his-is-the.md)

> Socrates woke to the ideal of dispassionate intelligence, Jesus to the ideal of passionate yet self-oblivious worship. Socrates urged intellectual integrity, Jesus integrity of will. Each, of course, though starting with a different emphasis, involved the other.
>
> Unfortunately both these ideals demanded of the human brain a degree of vitality and coherence of which the nervous system of the First Men was never really capable.

p. 17 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/socrates-woke-to-the.md)