The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or subrace of the larger Caucasian race. Belief in the existence of an Aryan race is sometimes referred to as "Aryanism".
While originally meant simply as a neutral ethno-linguistic classification, it was later used for ideologically motivated racism in Nazi and neo-Nazi doctrine, as well as in occultism and white supremacism in particular.
Read more about Aryan Race: Origin of The Term, 19th-century Physical Anthropology, Indo-Aryan Migration
Famous quotes containing the word race:
“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)