"'Traditions' which appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented" (Chapter 1, pg. 1.)

"Inventing traditions, it is assumed here, is essentially a process of formalization and ritualization, characterized by reference to the past, if only by imposing repetition" (Chapter 1, pg. 4.)

"This apparatus, to which [Scotsmen] ascribe great antiquity, is in fact largely modern" (Chapter 2, pg. 15.)

"However, history is not rational: or at least it is rational only in parts" (Chapter 2, pg. 24.)

"In this period Welsh scholars and patriots rediscovered the past, historical, linguistic and literary traditions, and where those traditions were inadequate, they created a past which had never existed" (Chapter 3, pg. 43-44.)

"Methodism was itself (although it did not admit it) the child of a complicated movement to moralize and evangelize the Welsh people, organized by dissenters and evangelical Anglicans from about 1660 to 1730" (Chapter 3, pg. 53.)

"A century late the position was...