A really great people can never accept a secondary part in the history of Humanity, nor even one of the first, but will have the first part.
 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons (1872). copy citation

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Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Source Demons
Topic humanity history
Date 1872
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Constance Garnett in 1916
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8117/8117-h/8117-h.htm

Context

“(in itself alone and in it exclusively) ; if it does not believe that it alone is fit and destined to raise up and save all the rest by its truth, it would at once sink into being ethnographical material, and not a great people. A really great people can never accept a secondary part in the history of Humanity, nor even one of the first, but will have the first part. A nation which loses this belief ceases to be a nation. But there is only one truth, and therefore only a single one out of the nations can have the true God, even though other nations may have great gods of their own.” source