“Blood, language, religion, way of life, were what the Greeks had in common and what distinguished them from the Persians an other non-Greeks. Of all the objective elements which define civilizations, however, the most important unsually is religion, as the Athenians emphasized. …

A significant correspondance exists between the division of people by cultural characteristics into civilizations and their division by physical characteristics into race. Yet ciivilization and race are not identical. People of the same race can be deeply divided by civilizations; people of different races may be united by civilization. In particular, the great missionary religions, Christianity and Islam, encompass societies from a variety of races. The crucial distinctions among human groups concern their values, beliefs, institutions, and social structures, not their physical size, head shapes, and skin colors.” (Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, 1996, s. 42)