Ancient Greece Quotes

Collection of famous quotes and sayings about Ancient Greece.

Quotes About Ancient Greece

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Just as women fought for the vote, and that very achievement compels us to the polling stations, so women have fought for the right to exercise and participate in sport, and we cannot throw that away. From the women of ancient Greece putting their lives on the line just by watching sport, and the women in Iran who continue to risk imprisonment today by doing the same, to the likes of Kathrine Switzer who campaigned for women to be allowed to run any distance they liked, or Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand who demand the right to participate in sport as women, without being told what their labia should look like. We ~ Anna Kessel
Ancient Greece quotes by Anna Kessel
The sciences were financially supported, honoured everywhere, universally pursued; they were like tall edifices supported by strong foundations. Then the Christian religion appeared in Byzantium and the centres of learning were eliminated, their vestiges effaced and the edifice of Greek learning was obliterated. Everything the ancient Greeks had brought to light vanished, and the discoveries of the ancients were altered out of recognition. ~ Mas'udi
Ancient Greece quotes by Mas'udi
In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine. ~ Henry David Thoreau
Ancient Greece quotes by Henry David Thoreau
The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome - not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley
Ancient Greece quotes by Thomas Henry Huxley
The devotee of myth is in a way a philosopher, for myth is made up of things that cause wonder.

(Metaphysics, I, 982b 18–19) ~ Aristotle
Ancient Greece quotes by Aristotle
All known great religions have had an exoteric aspect, that is, exterior, profane, for the masses of believers, and another esoteric, for a restricted select minority of initiates. So it was with the Egyptian and Greek cults. Those ignorant people who pompously speak to us about Aristotle, Socrates, Plato and the 'rational thought of the Greeks' ignore the fact that behind their ideas one finds the Eleusinian Mysteries of Delphi and elsewhere, in which these same philosophers, above all Plato, Aeschylus, Euripides took part, though they could not speak of it in public. The Orphic cults and mythology are the foundation of the philosophical thought of Ancient Greece. The word esoteric itself comes from the Greek work eisoteo and means 'to enter into' and 'to open a door' (towards the Gods: Theo, eiso-theo). ~ Miguel Serrano
Ancient Greece quotes by Miguel Serrano
No horoscope matches this accuracy. No theory of human causality, Freudian, Marxist, Christian or animist, has ever been so precise. No prophet in the Old Testament, no entrail-grazing oracle in ancient Greece, no crystal-ball gypsy clairvoyant on the pier at Bognor Regis ever pretended to tell people exactly when their lives would fall apart, let alone got it right. ~ Matt Ridley
Ancient Greece quotes by Matt Ridley
The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece, and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which such activity is not taboo suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any sort of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic in the species. ~ Alfred Kinsey
Ancient Greece quotes by Alfred Kinsey
In many ways we are all sons and daughters of ancient Greece. ~ Nia Vardalos
Ancient Greece quotes by Nia Vardalos
Periclean Greeks employed the term idiotis, without any connotation of stupidity or subnormality, to mean simply 'a person indifferent to public affairs.' Obviously, there is something wanting in the apolitical personality. But we have also come to suspect the idiocy of politicization - of the professional pol and power broker. The two idiocies make a perfect match, with the apathy of the first permitting the depredations of the second. ~ Christopher Hitchens
Ancient Greece quotes by Christopher Hitchens
Ancient traditions have long associated holy wells and springs as very special places of the Goddess or anima mundi: symbolic of the Great Mother and associated with birth, the feminine principle, the universal womb, the prima materia, the waters of fertility and refreshment and the fountain of life. The dreaming sites, as they are called, have also been associated with visions, healing, and other paranormal experiences. In ancient Greece, for example, there were more than three-hundred medical centers placed at water sources, where patients experienced healing. ~ Christopher McDowell
Ancient Greece quotes by Christopher McDowell
In ancient Greece, the word for "cook," "butcher," and "priest" was the same - mageiros - and the word shares an etymological root with "magic. ~ Michael Pollan
Ancient Greece quotes by Michael Pollan
I think of myself as a political idiot. Idiot, in ancient Greece, denoted a common person without access to knowledge and information--all women, by definition, and most men. I am unable to make judgments. I see no options I can identify with. Is that normal? ~ Jasmina Tesanovic
Ancient Greece quotes by Jasmina Tesanovic
... But don't be late, Troy, or I'll ... " She hesitated and laughed, not entirely happily. "I don't suppose I'll ever need to worry about you again, will I? I don't suppose I've ever needed to worry over a magician."
"There are always car accidents," Tabitha declared cheerfully. "A car could come around the corner and ... wallop! You'd need a terrific magician to get out of that one ... "
"Or eagles dropping tortoises," Troy added, looking amused. "That happened in Ancient Greece, you know. An eagle dropped a tortoise on some dramatist and killed him."
"No eagles or tortoises here," said Tabitha, "but a bit could fall off a plane. ~ Margaret Mahy
Ancient Greece quotes by Margaret Mahy
Visitors to Lyme in the nineteenth century, if they did not quite have to undergo the ordeal facing travellers to the ancient Greek colonies -Charles did not actually have to deliver a Periclean oration plus comprehensive world news summary from the steps of the Town Hall- were certainly expected to allow themselves to be examined and spoken to. ~ John Fowles
Ancient Greece quotes by John Fowles
better not bring up a lion inside your city,
But if you must, then humour all his moods. ~ Aristophanes
Ancient Greece quotes by Aristophanes
Helen's era was quite different from what most people think of when they hear the words ancient Greece. The Parthenon, the graceful statues, the works of Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, all came nearly a thousand years after Helen's time, during the classical era. In the Bronze Age, no one yet knew how to make brittle iron flexible enough to use for tools and weapons. Art, especially sculpture of the human form, was stiffer and more stylized. Few people could read or write. Instead of signing important papers, you would use a stone seal to leave an impression on clay tablets. The design on the seal would be as unique as a signature. There was a kind of writing in Bronze Age Greece, but it was mostly used to keep track of financial matters, such as royal tax records. Messages, poems, songs, and stories were not written down but were memorized and passed along by word of mouth. ~ Esther M. Friesner
Ancient Greece quotes by Esther M. Friesner
The causes which ruined the Republic of Athens illustrate the connection of ethics with politics rather than the vices inherent to democracy. A State which has only 30,000 full citizens in a population of 500,000, and is governed, practically, by about 3000 people at a public meeting, is scarcely democratic. The short triumph of Athenian liberty, and its quick decline, belong to an age which possessed no fixed standard of right and wrong. An unparalleled activity of intellect was shaking the credit of the gods, and the gods were the givers of the law. It was a very short step from the suspicion of Protagoras, that there were no gods, to the assertion of Critias that there is no sanction for laws. If nothing was certain in theology, there was no certainty in ethics and no moral obligation. The will of man, not the will of God, was the rule of life, and every man and body of men had the right to do what they had the means of doing. Tyranny was no wrong, and it was hypocrisy to deny oneself the enjoyment it affords. The doctrine of the Sophists gave no limits to power and no security to freedom; it inspired that cry of the Athenians, that they must not be hindered from doing what they pleased, and the speeches of men like Athenagoras and Euphemus, that the democracy may punish men who have done no wrong, and that nothing that is profitable is amiss. And Socrates perished by the reaction which they provoked. ~ John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
Ancient Greece quotes by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
Greek customs such as wine drinking were regarded as worthy of imitation by other cultures. So the ships that carried Greek wine were carrying Greek civilization, distributing it around the Mediterranean and beyond, one amphora at a time. Wine displaced beer to become the most civilized and sophisticated of drinks - a status it has maintained ever since, thanks to its association with the intellectual achievements of Ancient Greece. ~ Tom Standage
Ancient Greece quotes by Tom Standage
Quotes from Ancient Greece are mostly all bollocks ~ Karl Wiggins
Ancient Greece quotes by Karl Wiggins
JOCASTA:
So clear in this case were the oracles,
so clear and false. Give them no heed, I say;
what God discovers need of, easily
he shows to us himself. ~ Sophocles
Ancient Greece quotes by Sophocles
The fact is that men who know nothing of decency in their own lives are only too ready to launch foul slanders against their betters and to offer them up as victims to the evil deity of popular envy. ~ Plutarch
Ancient Greece quotes by Plutarch
Captive Greece took captive her savage conquerer and brought the arts to rustic Latium ~ Horace
Ancient Greece quotes by Horace
I learned that along with the towering achievements of the cultures of ancient Greece and China there stood the culture of Africa, unseen and denied by the imperialist looters of Africa's material wealth. ~ Paul Robeson
Ancient Greece quotes by Paul Robeson
Andy noticed my disposition, rushed over and wrapped his arms round me. This provided Mario the perfect opportunity to use my Valet and me as an example for his monumental demonstration, "While relationships in ancient Greece involved boys from 12 to about 17 or 18, in Renaissance Italy, boys were typically between 14 and 19." He presented us to the cheering crowd as if we were in a forum. ~ Young
Ancient Greece quotes by Young
If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don't give him more money; rather, reduce his desires. ~ Epicurus
Ancient Greece quotes by Epicurus
His knowledge of ancient Greece was based entirely on a poem Edgar Allan Poe, a few homosexual encounters with restaurateurs (he ate free at almost every soda fountain in the city), and a plaster reproduction of the Akropolis which, for some reason, he had coated with red nail polish. ~ Leonard Cohen
Ancient Greece quotes by Leonard Cohen
I tell you, because military training is not publicly recognised by the state, you must not make that an excuse for being a whit less careful in attending to it yourself. For you may rest assured that there is no kind of struggle, apart from war, and no undertaking in which you will be worse off by keeping your body in better fettle.

"For in everything that men do the body is useful; and in all uses of the body it is of great importance to be in as high a state of physical efficiency as possible. Why, even in the process of thinking, in which the use of the body seems to be reduced to a minimum, it is matter of common knowledge that grave mistakes may often be traced to bad health.

"And because the body is in a bad condition, loss of memory, depression, discontent, insanity often assail the mind so violently as to drive whatever knowledge it contains clean out of it. But a sound and healthy body is a strong protection to a man, and at least there is no danger then of such a calamity happening to him through physical weakness: on the contrary, it is likely that his sound condition will serve to produce effects the opposite of those that arise from bad condition. And surely a man of sense would submit to anything to obtain the effects that are the opposite of those mentioned in my list.

"Besides, it is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty t ~ Xenophon Memorabilia. 371BC Marchant Translation
Ancient Greece quotes by Xenophon Memorabilia. 371BC Marchant Translation
I recognized the handwriting, and my heart gave a skip; when I opened it I got a turn, for it began, 'To my beloved Hector,' and I thought, by God she's cheating on me, and has sent me the wrong letter by mistake. But in the second line was a reference to Achilles, and another to Ajax, so I understood she was just addressing me in terms which she accounted fitting for a martial paladin; she knew no better. It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whore-mongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not far off the mark. ~ George MacDonald Fraser
Ancient Greece quotes by George MacDonald Fraser
Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric. Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece. That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common sense. The poetry and myths are the response of a prehistoric people to the Universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality, not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know. ~ Robert M. Pirsig
Ancient Greece quotes by Robert M. Pirsig
Science uses the Red Shift to measure deep cosmic distances. But how to measure deep historic time? How about - the Saffron Shift.

If history itself had a color, it is . . . like wood or bark, or living forest floor.

Assigning hues to time periods, the sum total of history is saffron-brown - but the chromatic arc starts from blinding white (prehistory) to sun-yellow (Ancient Greece), then deepening to pale wood tones (Dark Ages) and finally exploding like an infinite chord into a full brown palette that includes mahoganies, siennas (Middle Ages), oak, sandalwood (the Renaissance), cherry, maple (Age of Reason), and near-black old woods (Industrial Revolution) for which there may not be names.

As time approaches our own, the wood-brown palette fades to a weird glassy colorlessness, goes black-and-white for a brief span as you think of photographs of your grandparents, and then again fades until we get a clear medium that is the color of the world.

And the present moment is perfectly transparent.

It's only as you start looking into the future, that the colors start returning. The glass is turning silvery with a murky haze, and there is blue somewhere in the distance . . . ~ Vera Nazarian
Ancient Greece quotes by Vera Nazarian
Hercules, huh?" Percy frowned. "That guy was like the Starbucks of Ancient Greece. Everywhere you turn - there he is. ~ Rick Riordan
Ancient Greece quotes by Rick Riordan
I read mostly historical fiction - lots of stuff set in ancient Rome and ancient Greece. I also liked sci-fi and fantasy: David Gemmell, Raymond E. Feist. It's a nice escape from the world. As much as I do love real-life stories, they can often make you hurt in a way I'd rather not hurt. ~ Henry Cavill
Ancient Greece quotes by Henry Cavill
Don't you remember what your grandfather used to say? That thing about pots and people?"
"That pots were like people," Alex replied flatly, thinking back to his grandfather carrying a tray of wet freshly thrown clay pots across the studio in ancient Athens. "He said you couldn't tell how well they'd turn out until they'd been fired in the kiln."
"Well then?"
"Well then, what?" muttered Alex. "Some pots shatter in the heat, Aries. I should know. I was the one who had to sweep them up every evening. Sometimes it's better not to go near the fire."
"Well, that's the spirit I must say!" huffed Aries. "Thank you very much! ~ Julia Wills
Ancient Greece quotes by Julia Wills
The heroes of ancient Greece wept more often than our silly, sentimental modern women. They knew it did no good to hold it back. Our ideal is the impassive courage of a statue. Unnecessary. Be sad and then you'll soon be over it. ~ Erich Maria Remarque
Ancient Greece quotes by Erich Maria Remarque
In English the expression 'ancient Greece' includes the meaning of 'finished,' whereas for us Greece goes on living, for better or for worse; it is in life, has not expired yet. ~ Budd Schulberg
Ancient Greece quotes by Budd Schulberg
I loved the myths of ancient Greece and Egypt. ~ Michelle Paver
Ancient Greece quotes by Michelle Paver
It always has been and always will be the same. The old folk of our grandfathers' young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden; and the young folk of to-day will drone out precisely similar nonsense for the aggravation of the next generation. "Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago," has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday. Take up the literature of 1835, and you will find the poets and novelists asking for the same impossible gift as did the German Minnesingers long before them and the old Norse Saga writers long before that. And for the same thing sighed the early prophets and the philosophers of ancient Greece. From all accounts, the world has been getting worse and worse ever since it was created. All I can say is that it must have been a remarkably delightful place when it was first opened to the public, for it is very pleasant even now if you only keep as much as possible in the sunshine and take the rain good-temperedly. ~ Jerome K. Jerome
Ancient Greece quotes by Jerome K. Jerome
The model for the U.S. Constitution was not ancient Greece but the Iroquois Confederacy. Then, ~ Gloria Steinem
Ancient Greece quotes by Gloria Steinem
The spirit of Greece, passing through and ascending above the world, hath so animated universal nature, that the very rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilds burst forth with it. ~ Walter Savage Landor
Ancient Greece quotes by Walter Savage Landor
For the philosophers of ancient Babylonia and Greece the sense world was not considered an illusion.
In the search for Divine, they turned towards art, towards symbols and signs within myths and legends. They created such a marvel of art that every detail became an expression of the spiritual. In mysterious ways the wisdom of the initiates poured into poets, artists, and thinkers. They awakened powers of thought and feeling that are not directly stimulated by the spiritual world. Manipulating the elements, they turned towards the Lady Science and carried her principles to the point that we are now able to manipulate the sound, the light, the matter and its manifestation. ~ Nataša Pantović
Ancient Greece quotes by Nataša Pantović
The history of ancient Greece showed that, in a democracy, emotion dominates reason to a greater extent than in any other political system, thus giving freer rein to the passions which sweep a state into war and prevent it getting out - at any point short of the exhaustion and destruction of one or other of the opposing sides. Democracy is a system which puts a brake on preparation for war, aggressive or defensive, but it is not one that conduces to the limitation of warfare or the prospects of a good peace. No political system more easily becomes out of control when passions are aroused. These defects have been multiplied in modern democracies, since their great extension of size and their vast electorate produce a much larger volume of emotional pressure. ~ B.H. Liddell Hart
Ancient Greece quotes by B.H. Liddell Hart
I had always been an enthusiastic reader of stuff about ancient Greece. I would read Herodotus and Thucydides just for fun. ~ Steven Pressfield
Ancient Greece quotes by Steven Pressfield
(W)hat is remarkable about the Greeks
even pre-philosophically
is that despite the salience of religious rituals in their lives, when it came to the question of what it is that makes an individual human life worth living they didn't look to the immortals but rather approached the question in mortal terms. Their approaching the question of human mattering in human terms is the singularity that creates the conditions for philosophy in ancient Greece, most especially as these conditions were realized in the city-state of Athens. ~ Rebecca Goldstein
Ancient Greece quotes by Rebecca Goldstein
She did not approach Caesar wrapped in a carpet, she was not a seductress, she did not use her charm to persuade the men in her life to lose their judgement, and she did not die by the bite of an asp…Yet other important elements of her career have been bypassed in the post-antique recension: she was a Skilled naval commander, a published medical authority, and an expert royal administrator who was met with adulation throughout the eastern Mediterranean, perhaps seen by some as a messianic figure, the hope for a future Eastern Mediterranean free of Roman domination. ~ Duane W. Roller
Ancient Greece quotes by Duane W. Roller
I have a long view of history - my orientation is archaeological because I'm always thinking in terms of ancient Greece and Rome, ancient Persia and Egypt. ~ Camille Paglia
Ancient Greece quotes by Camille Paglia
Your daughter is gay? Where are all these gay people coming from? Gay friends. Gay daughters of friends. Gay sisters-in-law. Gay suspects. I ask one guy for a kiss and suddenly I'm living in Ancient Greece. ~ Dani Alexander
Ancient Greece quotes by Dani Alexander
Debates about the imagination and its role in human knowledge go back in the West to ancient Greece around the secrets and enigmas of the revealed "symbol" and its relationship to the more plodding ways of reason and rational knowledge. The most recent chapter of that larger conversation goes back to the eighteenth century and what we now call the Romantic movement. The poets and philosophers of the latter asked: What is the imagination? Is it simply a spinner of fantasies? Or can it also become a "window" of revealed truths from some other deeper part of the soul or world? Or, better yet, like some secret two-way mirror in a modern-day police station, is the imagination both, depending on whether one is looking at or through its reflecting surface, that is, depending on which side of it one is standing? Can one stand on both sides? ~ Whitley Strieber
Ancient Greece quotes by Whitley Strieber
Nor was his name unheard or unador'd
In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land
Men call'd him Mulciber; and how he fell
From Heav'n, they fabl'd, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o're the Chrystal Battlements: from Morn
To Noon he fell, from Noon to dewy Eve,
A Summers day; and with the setting Sun
Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star,
On Lemnos th' Aegean Ile: thus they relate,
Erring... ~ John Milton
Ancient Greece quotes by John Milton
The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads - in the end - to the best within us. ~ Jesse Owens
Ancient Greece quotes by Jesse Owens
Some of the greatest mathematical minds of all ages, from Pythagoras and Euclid in ancient Greece, through the medieval Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa and the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, to present-day scientific figures such as Oxford physicist Roger Penrose, have spent endless hours over this simple ratio and its properties. But the fascination with the Golden Ratio is not confined just to mathematicians. Biologists, artists, musicians, historians, architects, psychologists, and even mystics have pondered and debated the basis of its ubiquity and appeal. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the Golden Ratio has inspired thinkers of all disciplines like no other number in the history of mathematics. ~ Mario Livio
Ancient Greece quotes by Mario Livio
You know better than anyone that nothing lasts. Nothing good. Nothing bad. Everything lives. Everything dies. Sometimes cities just fall into the sea. It's not a tragedy, that's just the way it is. People look around them and see the world and say this is how the world is supposed to be. Then they fight to keep it that way. They believe that this is what was intended - whether by design or cosmic accident - and that everything exists in a tenuous balance that must be preserved. But the balance is bullshit. The only thing constant in this world is the speed at which things change. Rain falls, waters rise, shorelines erode. What is one day magnificent seaside property in ancient Greece is the next resting thirty feet below the surface. Islands rise from the sea and continents crack and part ways forever. What was once a verdant forest teeming with life is now resting one thousand feet beneath a sheet of ice in Antarctica; what was once a glorious church now rests at the bottom of a dammed-up lake in Kansas. The job of nature is to march on and keep things going; ours is to look around, appreciate it, and wonder what's next? ~ C. Robert Cargill
Ancient Greece quotes by C. Robert Cargill
Isn't it a remarkable coincidence almost everyone has the same religion as their parents ? And it always just happens to be the right religion. Religions run in families. If we'd been brought up in ancient Greece we would all be worshiping Zeus and Apollo. If we had been born Vikings we would be worshiping Wotan and Thor. How does this come about ? Through childhood indoctrination. ~ Richard Dawkins
Ancient Greece quotes by Richard Dawkins
The golden section was discovered by the Egyptians, and has been used in art and architecture, most commonly, during the classical ages of Egypt and Greece. ~ Steven L. Griffing
Ancient Greece quotes by Steven L. Griffing
With reason did the Athenians adjudge Diagoras guilty of atheism, in that he not only divulged the Orphic doctrine, and published the mysteries of Eleusis and of the Cabiri, and chopped up the wooden statue of Hercules to boil his turnips, but openly declared that there were no gods at all. ~ Athenagoras Of Athens
Ancient Greece quotes by Athenagoras Of Athens
Hettites appeal to us not alone because of the influence they once exercised on the fortunes of the Chosen People, not alone because a Hittite was the wife of David and the ancestress of Christ, but also on account of the debt which the civilisation of our own Europe owes to them. Our culture is the inheritance we have received from ancient Greece, and the first beginnings of Greek culture were derived from the Hittite conquerors of Asia Minor ... The Hittites carried the time-worn civilisations of Babylonia and Egypt to the furthest boundary of Asia, and there handed them over to the West in the grey dawn of European history. ~ A.H. Sayce
Ancient Greece quotes by A.H. Sayce
All the plays that have ever been written, from ancient Greece to the present day, have never really been anything but thrillers ... Drama's always been realistic and there's always been a detective about ... Every play's an investigation brought to a successful conclusion. ~ Eugene Ionesco
Ancient Greece quotes by Eugene Ionesco
But no city-state ever solved the problem of incorporating new territories and new populations into its existing structure, or involving really large numbers of people in its political life (p. 11) ~ Joseph Reese Strayer
Ancient Greece quotes by Joseph Reese Strayer
Our journey is one of discovery on Sicily.
Like the past Greek writers.orators,historians and philosophers we are all searching for answers on Earth ~ Daniel Peter Buckley
Ancient Greece quotes by Daniel Peter Buckley
Homosexuality and trance were considered abnormalities now, while in the Middle Ages people had been made saints for their trances, which were considered the highest state of being, and in Ancient Greece, as Plato makes clear, homosexuality was 'a major means to the good life. ~ Lily King
Ancient Greece quotes by Lily King
No account of the Renaissance can be complete without some notice of the attempt made by certain Italian scholars of the fifteenth century to reconcile Christianity with the religion of ancient Greece. ~ Walter Pater
Ancient Greece quotes by Walter Pater
TEIRESIAS:
I tell you, king, this man, this murderer
(whom you have long declared you are in search of,
indicting him in threatening proclamation
as murderer of Laius)- he is here.
In name he is a stranger among citizens
but soon he will be shown to be a citizen
true native Theban, and he'll have no joy
of the discovery: blindness for sight
and beggary for riches his exchange,
he shall go journeying to a foreign country
tapping his way before him with a stick.
He shall be proved father and brother both
to his own children in his house; to her
that gave him birth, a son and husband both;
a fellow sower in his father's bed
with that same father that he murdered.
Go within, reckon that out, and if you find me
mistaken, say I have no skill in prophecy. ~ Sophocles
Ancient Greece quotes by Sophocles
Your religious beliefs typically depend on the community in which you were raised or live. The spiritual experiences of people in ancient Greece, medieval Japan or 21st-century Saudi Arabia do not lead to belief in Christianity. It seems, therefore, that religious belief very likely tracks not truth but social conditioning." - Gary Gutting, "The Stone," New York Times, September 14, 2011 ~ Peter Boghossian
Ancient Greece quotes by Peter Boghossian
Misogyny was born of fear of women. It spawned the ideology of male superiority. But this was ideology, not statement of fact; as such, it could not be confirmed, but was open to constant doubt. Male status was not immutable. Myths of matriarchies and Amazons societies showed female dominance. Three of the eleven extant comedies of Aristophanes show women in successful opposition to men. ... These were the nightmares of victors: that someday the vanquished would arise and treat their ex-masters as they themselves had been treated. ~ Sarah B. Ponderous
Ancient Greece quotes by Sarah B. Ponderous
FOR MOST OF human history, education was job training. Hunters, farmers, and warriors taught the young to hunt, farm, and fight. Children of the ruling class received instruction in the arts of war and governance, but this too was intended first and foremost as preparation for the roles they would assume later in society, not for any broader purpose. All that began to change twenty-five hundred years ago in ancient Greece. ~ Fareed Zakaria
Ancient Greece quotes by Fareed Zakaria
Tragedy's language stresses that whatever is within us is obscure, many faceted, impossible to see. Performance gave this question of what is within a physical force. The spectators were far away from the performers, on that hill above the theatre. At the centre of their vision was a small hut, into which they could not see. The physical action presented to their attention was violent but mostly unseen. They inferred it, as they inferred inner movement, from words spoken by figures whose entrances and exits into and out of the visible space patterned the play. They saw its results when that facade opened to reveal a dead body. This genre, with its dialectics of seen and unseen, inside and outside, exit and entrance, was a simultaneously internal and external, intellectual and somatic expression of contemporary questions about the inward sources of harm, knowledge, power, and darkness. ~ Ruth Padel
Ancient Greece quotes by Ruth Padel
No civilisation, not even that of ancient Greece, has ever undergone such a continuous and profound process of change as Western Europe has done during the last 900 years. It is impossible to explain this fact in purely economic terms by a materialistic interpretation of history. The principle of change has been a spiritual one and the progress of Western civilisation is intimately related to the dynamic ethos of Western Christianity, which has gradually made Western man conscious of his moral responsibility and his duty to change the world. ~ Christopher Dawson
Ancient Greece quotes by Christopher Dawson
You will have memories
Because of what we did back then
When we were new at this,
Yes, we did many things, then - all
Beautiful ... ~ Sappho
Ancient Greece quotes by Sappho
Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. ~ Henry David Thoreau
Ancient Greece quotes by Henry David Thoreau
In ancient Greece, politics and the market were not decoupled. ~ George Papandreou
Ancient Greece quotes by George Papandreou
But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome - people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert
Ancient Greece quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert
The civilization of ancient Greece was nurtured within city walls. In fact, all the modern civilizations have their cradles of brick and mortar.
These walls leave their mark deep in the minds of men. They set up a principle of "divide and rule" in our mental outlook, which begets in us a habit of securing all our conquests by fortifying them and separating them from one another. We divide nation and nation, knowledge and knowledge, man and nature. It breeds in us a strong suspicion of whatever is beyond the barriers we have built, and everything has to fight hard for its entrance into our recognition. ~ Rabindranath Tagore
Ancient Greece quotes by Rabindranath Tagore
Perhaps the strangest manifestation of the Eurocentric approach to the history of military technology is ... the attempt to discern fundamental cultural roots in the distant past that have resulted in the perceived current Western dominance of the world. This essentialism attempts to contrast ancient Greek logic and philosophy with the less rationally minded philosophies of the non-West. Modern science and technology, in this view, is a simple jump from ancient Greece to early modern Europe. ~ Peter A. Lorge
Ancient Greece quotes by Peter A. Lorge
That's how it goes - as soon as there's anything interesting in Ancient Greece, some arsehole with a magic hat comes along to murder it. ~ Catherynne M Valente
Ancient Greece quotes by Catherynne M Valente
The carved images on the early Minoan sealstones are tantalising, inscrutable. The Nature Goddess is yanked from the soil like a snake or a sheaf of barley; the Mistress of the Animals suckles goats and gazelles. There are male Adorants certainly - up on tiptoe, their outstretched arms hoisted in a kind of heil, their bodies arched suggestively, pelvis forward, before the Goddess - but there are no masculine deities, not a single one in sight. No woman worth her salt, one might think, could fail to be intrigued. ~ Alison Fell
Ancient Greece quotes by Alison Fell
Of all the great and minor faiths as religions that have evolved over the ages with humanity. Many had their birth at the death or near death of another religious faith. One day the anthropological phenomena of our predominant faiths may become naturally forgotten, demonized, if not
morph into another religious tradition altogether. What we historically call as mythology is for Ancient Greece,
Persia, or Mayan cultures were the Almighty religions of their age. So it will be again with our Epoch from today our renowned and accomplished heirs of thousands of years into
our combined futures. That will have regarded our present day Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as mythologies of their own future anthropological understanding. ~ Ivan Alexander Pozo-Illas
Ancient Greece quotes by Ivan Alexander Pozo-Illas
The mythology of a people is far more than a collection of pretty or terrifying fables to be retold in carefully bowdlerized form to our schoolchildren. It is the comment of the men of one particular age or civilization on the mysteries of human existence and the human mind, their model for social behaviour, and their attempt to define in stories of gods and demons their perception of the inner realities. We can learn much from the mythologies of earlier peoples if we have the humility to respect ways of thought widely differing from our own. In certain respects we may be far cleverer than they, but not necessarily wiser. We cannot return to the mythological thinking of an earlier age; it is beyond our reach, like the vanished world of childhood. Even if we feel a nostalgic longing for the past, like that of Jon Keats for Ancient Greece of William Morris for medieval England, there is now no way of entry. The Nazis tries to revive the myths of ancient Germany in their ideology, but such an attempt could only lead to sterility and moral suicide. We cannot deny the demands of our own age, but this need not prevent us turning to the faith of another age with sympathetic understanding, and recapturing imaginatively some of its vanished power. It will even help us view more clearly the assumptions and beliefs of our own time ~ H. R. Ellis Davidson
Ancient Greece quotes by H. R. Ellis Davidson
In ancient Greece, adolescence was a time when young men left their biological families to become the lovers of adult men. Sexuality was but one element of an affectional and educational relationship in which youths learned the ways of manhood ~ Barry D. Adam
Ancient Greece quotes by Barry D. Adam
OEDIPUS:
Upon the murderer I invoke this curse-
whether he is one man and all unknown,
or one of many- may he wear out his life
in misery to miserable doom!
If with my knowledge he lives at my hearth
I pray that I myself may feel my curse.
On you I lay my charge to fulfill all this
for me, for the God, and for this land of ours destroyed and blighted, by the God forsaken. ~ Sophocles
Ancient Greece quotes by Sophocles
CHORUS:
You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus,- him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most masterful; not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot- see him now and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him!
Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain. ~ Sophocles
Ancient Greece quotes by Sophocles
Over most of the one thousand years of philosophy in ancient Greece and Rome, philosophy was assiduously studied in every generation by many ancient philosophers and their students as the best way to become good people and to live good human lives. ~ John M. Cooper
Ancient Greece quotes by John M. Cooper
The German astronomer Johannes Kepler coined the term "camera obscura" in the early seventeenth century, but by then the phenomenon had been known for millennia; in fact, it is perhaps the oldest known optical illusion. Some form of camera obscura was most likely behind a popular illusion performed in ancient Greece and Rome, in which spectral images were cast upon the smoke of burning incense by performers using concave metal mirrors - hence the expression "smoke and mirrors. ~ Jennifer Ouellette
Ancient Greece quotes by Jennifer Ouellette
Like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance. ~ Homer
Ancient Greece quotes by Homer
The story of women in antiquity should be told now, not only because it is a legitimate aspect of social history, but because the past illuminates contemporary problems in relationships between men and women. ... It is most significant to note the consistency with which some attitudes toward women and the roles women play in Western society have endured through the centuries. ~ Sarah B. Pomeroy
Ancient Greece quotes by Sarah B. Pomeroy
Christianity enhanced the notion of political and social accountability by providing a new model: that of servant leadership. In ancient Greece and Rome no one would have dreamed of considering political leaders anyone's servants. The job of the leader was to lead. But Christ invented the notion that the way to lead is by serving the needs of others, especially those who are the most needy. ~ Dinesh D'Souza
Ancient Greece quotes by Dinesh D'Souza
It came as a belated epiphany to me when I learned that the Greeks had several different words for the disparate phenomena that in English we indiscriminately lump together under the label love. Our inability to distinguish between, say, eros (sexual love) and storgé (the love that grows out of friendship) leads to more than semantic confusion. Careening through this world with such a crude taxonomical guide to human passion is as foolhardy as piloting a plane ignorant of the difference between stratus and cumulonimbus, knowing only the word cloud. ~ Tim Kreider
Ancient Greece quotes by Tim Kreider
If I'd been born in ancient Greece, I'd worship Zeus and Aphrodite ~ Richard Dawkins
Ancient Greece quotes by Richard Dawkins
In other words if a man is armed, then one pretty much has to take his opinions into account. One can see how this worked at its starkest in Xenophon's Anabasis, which tells the story of an army of Greek mercenaries who suddenly find themselves leaderless and lost in the middle of Persia. They elect new officers, and then hold a collective vote to decide what to do next. In a case like this, even if the vote was 60/40, everyone could see the balance of forces and what would happen if things actually came to blows. Every vote was, in a real sense, a conquest. ~ David Graeber
Ancient Greece quotes by David Graeber
That is the god's work, spinning threads of death through the lives of mortal men, and all to make a song for those to come ... ~ Homer
Ancient Greece quotes by Homer
Although the medieval witch-cult of Western Europe derived from a primitive, non-selfconscious nature-religion, with sophistication it had become corrupt (as had paganism in ancient Greece) and developed into a pathological cult in which the doctrine and rites of the Christian Church were deliberately parodied, and evil instincts and desires were sanctioned and encouraged. ~ F. Marian McNeill
Ancient Greece quotes by F. Marian McNeill
In ancient Greece, some people did that for a living. They would just sit on a tree branch or a stone bench and ponder, sometimes aloud. Some got answers and some got headaches. And now, in this new age of jet planes and pistachio ice-cream, we pondered over the same questions without getting the answers and maybe in five thousand years, some other kids will be sitting on roofs pondering the same all over again. Not far from the Shepherd's star, there was a discreet star, one who didn't shine too brightly. I had it named "Goddessa". It was mine. ~ Patric Juillet
Ancient Greece quotes by Patric Juillet
Trickster foxes appear in old stories gathered from countries and cultures all over the world
including Aesop's Fables from ancient Greece, the "Reynard" stories of medieval Europe, the "Giovannuzza" tales of Italy, the "Brer Fox" lore of the American South, and stories from diverse Native American traditions. ~ Terri Windling
Ancient Greece quotes by Terri Windling
In the past, people around the world heard the buzzing of bees as voices of the departed, a murmured conveyance from the spirit world. This belief traces back to the cultures of Egypt and Greece, among others, where tradition held that a person's soul appeared in bee form when it left the body, briefly visible (and audible) in its journey to the hereafter...Nobody knows the exact sequence of events that led to the beginning of bees, but everyone can agree on at least one thing: we know what it sounded like. ~ Thor Hanson
Ancient Greece quotes by Thor Hanson
In ancient Greece, Socrates reportedly didn't fancy a literate society. He felt that people would lose the capacity to think for themselves, simply adopting the perspective of a handy written opinion, and that they would cease to remember what could be written down. ~ Nick Harkaway
Ancient Greece quotes by Nick Harkaway
In ancient Greece more than one royal house was guilty of crime which became the stuff of tragedy: now Rome was to follow the same path - but not in vain; for that very guilt was to hasten the coming of liberty and the hatred of kings, and to ensure that the throne it won should never again be occupied. ~ Livy
Ancient Greece quotes by Livy
We are living in the era of the busybody. In ancient Greece, if a person wanted guidance, it involved a long, arduous expensive journey to consult the oracle at Delphi. Today, if you want guidance, all you have to do is unplug your ears. ~ Margo Kaufman
Ancient Greece quotes by Margo Kaufman
Did you hear the story of Socrates? He was a philosopher in ancient Greece, so they killed him. ~ Troy DeNuthe
Ancient Greece quotes by Troy DeNuthe
What they forget is that, from Ancient Greece on, the people who returned from battle were either dead on their shields or stronger, despite and because of their scars. ~ Paulo Coelho
Ancient Greece quotes by Paulo Coelho
She was halfway to deep sleep when the door creaked, a noise loud enough to rouse her, yet soft enough to doubt her having heard anything. She lay motionless, listening but hearing only the wind outside, the clock, the sounds of an ancient building. Normal sounds, but still her skin prickled. Pressure built in her head. Her pulse beat in her ears. The feeling of pressure thickened, stealing over her, a sense of envelopment, a shift in perception. Not her pulse, but footsteps. Someone pacing. Ten steps toward the fireplace. Ten back to the foot of her bed. The susurration of fabric against fabric. Metal sliding along metal, a low ringing sound, and mixed with that a murmuring. She peered into the darkness but saw nothing. No moving shadows, no figure approaching her bed, just the inert shapes of furniture and the resulting shadows. The resonance in her head grew, half convincing her she heard footsteps and the low, regular sound of breathing. The murmuring began again, a breath, then a whisper.

My love.

Steps paced near, and she swore she could feel the air thicken. Pain lanced along her temple.

My heart.

Unendurable pressure. She tried to move, but couldn't. Her limbs were frozen, trapped in her nightmare. More footsteps. A breath on her cheek. Cold air wafted through the room.

My own.

A face flashed before her eyes. She tried to breathe and couldn't get air into her lungs. She screwed her eyes shut, but the fa ~ Carolyn Jewel
Ancient Greece quotes by Carolyn Jewel
I apply the warrior energy to the blues by tapping into the ancient job of the griot class.That wasn't a job you did because someone said you had to do it;you did it because that's what you did.
It was your right as a person.In terms of warriorship,you had to stand up and do what was right,what you were born to do……
In warriorship you have to be very present,very aware of where you are,where you've been and where you're going.
Part of what a warrior does,the compassion and generosity of warriorship,is to get the door open and hold it open for other people to come through.That means the warrior is often out there alone.
Sometimes the door closes behind you and you don't know it happened.Then you have to stop,put the guitar down,go back and get a wedge,and get the door open again,so..people can hear the music. You can't be afraid,no matter what's going on."
Taj Mahal

Autobiography of A Bluesman ~ Taj Mahal
Ancient Greece quotes by Taj Mahal
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