*Se - Giorgio Agamben p.136, Potentialities

'It is not because life and death are the most sacred things that sacrifice contains killing; on the contrary, life and death became the most sacred things because sacrifices contained killing. (In this sense, nothing explains the difference between anitquity and the modern world better than the fact that for the first, the destruction of human life was sacred, whereas for the second what is sacred is life itself).'