Keeping Together in Time Quotes

“What I remember now, years afterwards, is that I rather liked strutting around, and so, I feel sure, did most of my fellows.' Marching aimlessly about on the drill field, swaggering in conformity with prescribed military postures, conscious only of keeping in step so as to make the next move correctly and in time somehow felt good. Words are inadequate to describe the emotion aroused by the prolonged movement in unison that drilling involved. A sense of pervasive well-being is what I recall; more specifically, a strange sense of personal enlargement; a sort of swelling out, becoming bigger than life, thanks to participation in collective ritual.”
― William H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History

“The shared euphoria aroused by keeping together in time is intrinsically diffuse, without definite external object or significance. Ideas and words can therefore turn the warm sentiments of group solidarity it arouses in many different directions. Hitler's brutal, suicidal path is not the only way to go, nor does the enormous variety of existing religious groups exhaust possible meanings assignable to this human capability. Benign, humane, and secular ideals can also be nourished by muscular bonding within human groups, large and small.”
― William H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time