Every nation believes it invented the comforts of civilized life first.

Evidence

“On the conceit of nations, there is a golden saying of Diodorus Siculus. Every nation, according to him, whether Greek or barbarian, has had the same conceit that it before all other nations invented the comforts of human life and that its remembered history goes back to the very beginning of the world.” — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2139

Categorization

• XREF: This is the classic ethnonational conceit Gramsci borrows from Vico/Diodorus; pairs with the later Islamophobia readings on how civilizational narcissism constructs the Other.
• DEFINE: Defines the concept of ‘conceit of nations’ that Gramsci adapts to ‘party conceit’ — a useful term for the toolkit.