Bc Quotes

No matter what historians claimed, BC really stood for "Before Coffee.

Hey, T-Rex? Remind me next time I want to get smartass with you that it’s a really stupid move on my part? (Talon) Oh, no, you don’t, you wuss. You told me the next time you saw Ash you were going to ask him if he’d seen the movie 10,000 BC and if it’d made him homesick. (Wulf)

Una Salus Victis Nullam Sperare Salutem - (Latin - written 19 BC) The only hope for the doomed, is no hope at all...

I expected him to do his usual thing of "Oh, Sophie, but that is impossible b/c of this big word, and that big word, and also this abstract concept.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

As Aristocleia raised her cup to toast Xanthippus, her gown slipped from her shoulders, exquisite as Aphrodite’s, and flowed like the water that slid over her naked breasts when she allowed him to watch her bathe. It was wonderful to possess a gem of a woman. It made a man feel beautiful and godlike himself, briefly.

Heraclitus, a philosopher born in the Persian Empire back in the fifth century BC, had it right when he wrote about men on the battlefield. “Out of every one hundred men,” he wrote, “ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior…

And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round.

A talent for following the ways of yesterday’, declared King Wu-ling in 307 BC, ‘is not sufficient to improve the world of today.

Heaven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us. This is the great realization of the Upanishads of India in the ninth Century B.C. All the gods, all the heavens, all the world, are within us. They are magnified dreams, and dreams are manifestations in image form of the energies of the body in conflict with each other. That is what myth is. Myth is a manifestation in symbolic images, in metaphorical images, of the energies of the organs of the body in conflict with each other. This organ wants this, that organ wants that. The brain is one of the organs.

Judaea was not a forgotten backwater in the Roman world. Jews represented about ten percent of the population of the western empire and about twenty percent of the population of the eastern empire. By comparison, Jews represent only about two per cent of the population of the United States today. Never, since the fall of Judah to Babylon in the sixth century BC until the twentieth century had Jews comprised so large a part of any body politic.

Recently, someone asked me if I believed in astrology. He seemed somewhat puzzled when I explained that the reason I don't is because I'm a Gemini.

What’s your nickname?” “BC.” She frowns, trying to figure it out. “Because your middle name is Charles?” I shake my head and tell her with the straightest face, “Big Cock.

Those who seek to achieve things should show no mercy. Kautilya, Indian philosopher third century B.C. OBSERVANCE

I am a Prince," he replied, being rather dense. "It is the function of a Prince—value A—to kill monsters—value B—for the purpose of establishing order—value C—and maintaining a steady supply of maidens—value D. If one inserts the derivative of value A (Prince) into the equation y equals BC plus CD squared, and sets it equal to zero, giving the apex of the parabola, namely, the point of intersection between A (Prince) and B (Monster), one determines value E—a stable kingdom. It is all very complicated, and if you have a chart handy I can graph it for you.

It is difficult to fight against anger; for a man will buy revenge with his soul.

Book: Powerless Page: 220 Kai "im going to ask you again, who did this to you?" Pae "why do you care?" kai "bc i dont tolerate my toys being played with.

And when he [the author of the universe] had compounded the whole, he divided it up into as many souls as there are stars, and allotted each soul to a star. And mounting them on their stars, as if on chariots, he showed them the nature of the universe and told them the laws of their destiny. - "Timaeus" by Plato 427-347 B.C.

The first duty of government is to protect the powerless from the powerful.

For what the leaders are, that, as a rule, will the men below them be. —Xenophon (430?–355? B.C.)

I’ve got you, Mallory. Nothing bad is goi bc to happen. You can let yourself want this, because you already have it. You have me.

So long as our textbooks hide from us the roles that people of color have played in exploration, from at least 6000 BC to the twentieth century, they encourage us to look to Europe and its extensions as the seat of all knowledge and intelligence. So long as they say “discover,” they imply that whites are the only people who really matter. So long as they simply celebrate Columbus, rather than teach both sides of his exploit, they encourage us to identify with white Western exploitation rather than study it.

Princess," he said, spreading his arms in a shrug, "how does such a little thing like you get such a big temper?" I held up my hand to shield my eyes from the sun. "Marc Antony," I said, "how does such a big man like you have such a little brain?

There have been five great kisses since 1642 B.C. when Saul and Delilah Korn's inadvertent discovery swept across Western civilization. (Before then couples hooked thumbs.) And the precise rating of kisses is a terribly difficult thing, often leading to great controversy, because although everyone agrees with the formula of affection times purity times intensity times duration, no one has ever been completely satisfied with how much weight each element should receive. But on any system, there are five that everyone agrees deserve full marks. Well, this one left them all behind.

Our need to control eventually works against us b/c we start to repress what we truly feel, need and want. God is in control so trust in that more than yourself!

It is sixty-six books written by forty authors, written between 1446 B.C. & 90 A.D. But, now we discover that it is an integrated message system from outside our time and space domain.

She sprinted after him, grabbing him by the shoulder just as she caught up. “I … I am sorry.” He let out a deep sigh. “As am I.” He yanked his shoulder free and continued walking back inside the castle.

Why didn’t the toilet paper cross the road? I didn’t get a chance to reply before another message from him came in. Aaron: Bc it got stuck in a crack

I would say that all our sciences are the material that has to be mythologized. A mythology gives spiritual import - what one might call rather the psychological, inward import, of the world of nature round about us, as understood today. There's no real conflict between science and religion ... What is in conflict is the science of 2000 BC ... and the science of the 20th century AD.

Archbishop James Usher (1580-1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testaments in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 B.C. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004 B.C., at exactly 9:00 A.M., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh. This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour. The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur skeletons was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet. This proves two things: Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, [ie., everybody.] to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time. Secondly, the Earth's a Libra.

These memories sustained him, but not so easily. Too often they reminded him of where he was when he last summoned them. They lay on the far side of a great divide in time, as significant as B.C. and A.D. Before prison, before the war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality.

Alessa looked at Brennus giving him a smirk. “Brennus.” “Alessa.” “Still think that you are the God’s gift to all faeries?” “Still trying to convince yourself that I am not?” Brennus responded smirking arrogantly and leaning back in his chair.

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." Benjamin Franklin never said those words, he was falsely attributed on a respected quotation website and it spread from there. The quote comes from the Xunzi. Xun Kuang was a Chinese Confucian philosopher that lived from 312-230 BC. His works were collected into a set of 32 books called the Xunzi, by Liu Xiang in about 818 AD. There are woodblock copies of these books that are almost 1100 years old. Book 8 is titled Ruxiao ("The Teachings of the Ru"). The quotation in question comes from Chapter 11 of that book. In Chinese the quote is: 不闻不若闻之, 闻之不若见之, 见之不若知之, 知之不若行之 It is derived from this paragraph: Not having heard something is not as good as having heard it; having heard it is not as good as having seen it; having seen it is not as good as knowing it; knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice. (From the John Knoblock translation, which is viewable in Google Books) The first English translation of the Xunzi was done by H.H. Dubs, in 1928, one-hundred and thirty-eight years after Benjamin Franklin died.

It is always in season for old men to learn.

This is the sum of duty. Do not unto others that which would cause you pain if done to you.

I’m sure I have no idea what you are talking about PRINCESS.” He tilted his head and half curtseyed when he said the last word. “That! That is what I am talking about. Since we ran into the others you have been cold and more arrogant than usual.” She kept her voice low so the others would not hear. “Is that so? I would say I was averagely arrogant

Chaos exists only in the moment. But Fate knows all. Every action and reaction. Since everything is destined, nothing is random... Chaos is only an illusion.

Ancient Egypt, like that of the Olmecs (Bolivia), emerged all at once and fully formed. Indeed, the period of transition from primitive to advanced society appears to have been so short that it makes no kind of historical sense. Technological skills that should have taken hundreds or even thousands of years to evolve were brought into use almost overnight-- and with no apparent antecedents whatever. For example, remains from the pre-dynastic period around 3500 BC show no trace of writing. Soon after that date, quite suddenly and inexplicably, the hieroglyphs familiar from so many of the ruins of Ancient Egypt begin to appear in a complete and perfect state. Far from being mere pictures of objects or actions, this written language was complex and structured at the outset, with signs that represented sounds only and a detailed system of numerical symbols. Even the very earliest hieroglyphs were stylized and conventionalized; and it is clear that an advanced cursive script was it common usage by the dawn of the First Dynasty.

Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something in nature that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. Aristotle Politics, c. 328 BC

I almost never use B.C. and A.D. to describe time periods. I use BKCWC. Before Kirk Cameron Went Crazy. That’s how I judge time.

[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances. … They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it." Rhetoric, fourth century BCE (BC)

Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

If there was anything obviously heroic about medieval surgery, it was the patient.

Cheerfulness is among the most laudable virtues. It gains you the good will and friendship of others. It blesses those who practice it and those upon whom it is bestowed.

He who does not know food, how can he understand the diseases of man?” —Hippocrates, the father of medicine (460-357 B.C.)

the famous conflict of science and religion has actually nothing to do with religion, but is simply of two sciences: that of 4000 B.C. and that of A.D. 2000.

In the tenth century BC, the priests of India devised the Brahmodya competition, which would become a model of authentic theological discourse. The object was to find a verbal formula to define the Brahman, the ultimate and inexpressible reality beyond human understanding. The idea was to push language as far as it would go, until participants became aware of the ineffable. The challenger, drawing on his immense erudition, began the process by asking an enigmatic question and his opponents had to reply in a way that was apt but equally inscrutable. The winner was the contestant who reduced the others to silence. In that moment of silence, the Brahman was present - not in the ingenious verbal declarations but in the stunning realisation of the impotence of speech. Nearly all religious traditions have devised their own versions of this exercise. It was not a frustrating experience; the finale can, perhaps, be compared to the moment at the end of the symphony, when there is a full and pregnant beat of silence in the concert hall before the applause begins. The aim of good theology is to help the audience to live for a while in that silence.

Current theories on the creation of the Universe state that, if it were created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came to being between ten and twenty thousand million years ago. By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half thousand million years old. These dates are incorrect. Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of the Creation at 3760BC. Greek Orthodox theologians put Creation as far back as 5508BC. These suggestions are also incorrect. Archbishop James Usher (1580-1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004BC. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004BC, at exactly 9.00 a.m., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh. This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour. The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur skeletons was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet.

A thousand years ago the Chinese had an entirely codified kitchen while the French were still gnawing on bones. Chopsticks have been around since the fourth century B.C. Forks didn't show up in England until 1611, and even then they weren't meant for eating but just to hold the meat still while you hacked at it with your knife.

It was called evolutionary biology. Under its sway, the sexes were separated again, men into hunters and women into gatherers. Nurture no longer formed us; nature did. Impulses of hominids dating from 20,000 B.C. were still controlling us. And so today on television and in magazines you get the current simplifications. Why can't men communicate? (Because they had to be quiet on the hunt.) Why do women communicate so well? (Because they had to call out to one another where the fruits and berries were.) Why can men never find things around the house? (Because they have a narrow field of vision, useful in tracking prey.) Why can women find things so easily? (Because in protecting the nest they were used to scanning a wide field.) Why can't women parallel-park? (Because low testosterone inhibits spatial ability.) Why won't men ask for directions? (Because asking for directions is a sign of weakness, and hunters never show weakness.) This is where we are today. Men and women, tired of being the same, want to be different again.

The great milestones of civilization always have the whiff of utopia about them at first. According to renowned sociologist Albert Hirschman, utopias are initially attacked on three grounds: futility (it’s not possible), danger (the risks are too great), and perversity (it will degenerate into dystopia). But Hirschman also wrote that almost as soon as a utopia becomes a reality, it often comes to be seen as utterly commonplace. Not so very long ago, democracy still seemed a glorious utopia. Many a great mind, from the philosopher Plato (427–347 B.C.) to the statesman Edmund Burke (1729–97), warned that democracy was futile (the masses were too foolish to handle it), dangerous (majority rule would be akin to playing with fire), and perverse (the “general interest” would soon be corrupted by the interests of some crafty general or other). Compare this with the arguments against basic income. It’s supposedly futile because we can’t pay for it, dangerous because people would quit working, and perverse because ultimately a minority would end up having to toil harder to support the majority.

In the beginning there was Isis: Oldest of the Old, She was the Goddess from whom all Becoming Arose. She was the Great Lady, Mistress of the two Lands of Egypt, Mistress of Shelter, Mistress of Heaven, Mistress of the House of Life, Mistress of the word of God. She was the Unique. In all Her great and wonderful works She was a wiser magician and more excellent than any other God. Thebes, Egypt, Fourteenth Century BC

It would be strange if a single ear of corn grew in a large plain, or there were only one world in the infinite.

They talked like this all the time. There was no malice in it: they were just brutally frank with each other. They were brothers, so there was no need to be nice." ~~Winter of the World (having 3 sons, it's nice to know this dynamic is normal b/c I'm always telling them to, 'Talk nice to your brother!') :)

to the end, no matter what it is you are considering. Often enough, God gives a man a glimpse of happiness, and then utterly ruins him. THE HISTORIES, HERODOTUS, FIFTH CENTURY B.C. Indians

We have fallen upon evil times and the world has waxed very old and wicked. Politics are very corrupt. Children are no longer respectful to their parents.

Eloquence which does not startle I don’t consider eloquence.” CICERO, LETTER TO BRUTUS, 48 B.C.

Youse guys think this deleted outfit is a blankety-blank nursery. Well, it ain’t! See? —Remark attributed to a Hellenic corporal before the walls of Troy, 1194 B.C.

Successful people work hard on the right things b/c working hard on the wrong things only makes one worn out while failing.

The happiest life consists of ignorance, Before you learn how to grieve or rejoice." --SOPHOCLES (496-406 B.C.)

For no matter what the factual data were, all the books written about Blacks by their conquerors reflected the conquerors viewpoints.

Not by age, but by capacity, is wisdom acquired.

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgement difficult. — Hippocrates (460-400 B.C.)

A very long time ago, some 2.5 million years B.C., the mother of human species as we know it, our ultimate ancestor, appeared in East Africa... She was four feet tall and probably black..

Well, how do we get out of this place?” Evyette’s voice shaking slightly. “We can’t.” If Kaleb felt any hopelessness he wasn’t conveying it. He looked around arduously, “Unless we find someone willing to help us.” “Oh well, that should not be a problem at all,” Tristan retorted throwing his hands up, “considering everything so far has tried to kill us!

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don't grow on trees, like in the old days. So where does one find love? When you're sixteen it's easy, like being unleashed with a credit card in a department store of kisses. There's the first kiss. The sloppy kiss. The peck. The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we shouldn't be doing this kiss. The but your lips taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss. The I wish you'd quit smoking kiss. The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad sometimes kiss. The I know your tongue like the back of my hand kiss. As you get older, kisses become scarce. You'll be driving home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road, with its purple thumb out. If you were younger, you'd pull over, slide open the mouth's red door just to see how it fits. Oh where does one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile. Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling. Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss. Now what? Don't invite the kiss over and answer the door in your underwear. It'll get suspicious and stare at your toes. Don't water the kiss with whiskey. It'll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters, but in the morning it'll be ashamed and sneak out of your body without saying good-bye, and you'll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left on the inside of your mouth. You must nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it illuminates the room. Hold it to your chest and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from a special beach. Place it on the tongue's pillow, then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C. But one kiss levitates above all the others. The intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss. The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss. Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

She reached for the hilt of her sword, but like a flash he drew the dagger that was at his waist and held it at her throat with his other hand pressed behind her neck. “Now, now princess, that is not the proper way to behave. I have not even threatened you,” he looked her over, “yet.

Alannah?” He held her limp body waiting for a response. “Don’t do this.” He put his hand over the other cut whispering his words and healing it as well. “Alannah?” His voice begged, as he held her face in his hand Still no response. He looked at the ground she had laid on realizing that she had lost a lot of blood. Then from the corner of his eye he saw the rise and fall of her chest and let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. She still lives.

My foot slipped. A split second. And for that split second, I was falling. In that split second, I didn't panic. I thought, 'oh'. Then Rachel's hand wrapped around my arm and steadied me. 'Thanks,' I stared at the edge . . . Two seconds ago all I could think was, 'oh, thank god, now it's over.

This is my problem. I don’t know how to talk along the surface of things, but I also don’t want to unearth the ugly stuff, over and over again, for people who are just passing through my life. It’s depleting. Like every time I dole out a kernel of my history to someone who’s not going to become a fixture I bc my life, a piece of me gets carried away, somewhere I can never get it back. You can’t untell someone your secrets. You can’t I say those delicate truths once you learn you can’t trust the person you handed them to.

I often must sacrifice my own needs and desires for the purpose of giving my children what they need and modeling for them the depths of Christ's love. "...make myself available in the routine tasks and myriad interruptions of daily life b/c I believe it is God's will for me to serve my family through them.

The term 'black' was given a rebirth by the black youth revolt. As reborn, it does not refer to the particular color of any particular person, but to the attitude of pride and devotion to the race whose homeland from times immemorial was called 'The Land of the Blacks.' Almost overnight our youngsters made 'black' coequal with 'white' in respectability, and challenged the anti-black Negroes to decide on which side they stood. This was no problem for many who are light or even near-white in complexion, for they themselves were among the first to proclaim with pride, 'call me black!' Those who hate the term but hold the majority of leadership positions feel compelled to use it to protect their leadership roles.

Unfortunately, identifying Ramses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus, which is the identification most frequently found in both scholarly and popular books, does not work if one also wishes to follow the chronology presented in the Bible.

History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heart-breaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.

Democrtitus, in the fifth century B.C. had declared that all the world was composed of only two elements: atomes and the void. This reduction of the myriad of forms to only two was the ultimate in dualistic reasoning. Christianity adopted dualism when it created the strict division between good and evil and heaven and hell.

A few hundred thousand years ago, in early human (or hominid) prehistory, growth was so slow that it took on the order of one million years for human productive capacity to increase sufficiently to sustain an additional one million individuals living at subsistence level. By 5000 BC, following the Agricultural Revolution, the rate of growth had increased to the point where the same amount of growth took just two centuries. Today, following the Industrial Revolution, the world economy grows on average by that amount every ninety minutes.

I still want to feel you against me.” Her gaze dropped to his hands. “I want you to stay with me. Hold me. Just tonight. If I lose you again tomorrow then it will still be worth it. I will lose you a hundred times, if you would but hold me in your arms each time before my loss.” She saw his eyes water, but no tears emerged...

My father will find you and kill you for what you have done.” She said to him solemnly. Maligo towered over her, a leering smile twisting his dark face. “You would have to consider yourself lucky if you ever see your father again. Even if it is while he watches me take your life.” He snarled, allowing a haughty smirk creep across his face.

Complaints about the demise of society and the “youth of today” also tend to be timeless. Consider this pronouncement, inscribed on an Assyrian tablet circa 2800 B.C.: Our earth is degenerate these days . . . bribery and corruption abound, children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and the end of the world is evidently approaching.

Why did popular songs always focus on romantic love? Why this preoccupation with first meetings, sad partings, honeyed kisses, heartbreak, when life was also full of children's births and trips to the shore and longtime jokes with friends? Once Maggie had seen on TV where archaeologists had just unearthed a fragment of music from who knows how many centuries B.C., and it was a boys lament for a girl who didn't love him back. Then besides the songs there were the magazine stories and the novels and the movies, even the hair-spray ads and the pantyhose ads. It struck Maggie as disproportionate. Misleading, in fact.

Again, wars do not really end until the conditions that started them--a bellicose government, an aggressive leader, a national policy of brinksmanship--are eliminated. Otherwise, there remains a bellum interruptum, much like the so-called Peace of Nicias, when Athens and Sparta agreed to a time-out in 421 B.C., before going at each other with renewed and deadly fury in 415 B.C.

Rome became a republic in 509 B.C., after driving out its king and abolishing the monarchy. The next two centuries saw a long struggle for power between a group of noble families, patricians, and ordinary citizens, plebeians, who were excluded from public office. The outcome was a apparent victory for the people, but the old aristocracy, supplemented by rich pledeian nobles, still controlled the state. What looked in many ways like democracy was, in fact, an oligarcy modified by elections.

For us, the events which took place between 1500 and 1800 on the soil of Western Europe constitute the most important third of “world” history; for the Chinese historian, on the contrary, who looks back on and judges by 4000 years of Chinese history, those centuries generally are a brief and unimportant episode, infinitely less significant than the centuries of the Han dynasty (206 B.C. to 220 A.D.), which in his “world” history are epoch-making.

Now he reduced his progress to the rhythm of his boots -- he walked across the land until he came to the sea. Everything that impeded him had to be outweighed, even if only by a fraction, by all that drove him on. In one pan of the scales, his wound, thirst, the blister, tiredness, the heat, the aching in his feet and legs, the Stukas, the distance, the Channel; in the other, I'll wait for you, and the memory of when she had said it, which he had come to treat like a sacred site. Also, the fear of capture. His most sensual memories -- their few minutes in the library, the kiss in Whitehall -- was bleached colorless through overuse. He knew by heart certain passages from her letters, he had revisited their tussle with the vase by the fountain, he remembered the warmth from her arm at the dinner when the twins went missing. These memories sustained him, but not so easily. Too often they reminded him of where he was when he last summoned them. They lay on the far side of a great divide in time, as significant as B.C. and A.D. Before prison, before war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality. But these heresies died when he read her last letter. He touched his breast pocket. It was a kind of genuflection. Still there. Here was something new on the scales. That he could be cleared had all the simplicity of love. Merely tasting the possibility reminded him of how much had narrowed and died. His taste for life, no less, all the old ambitions and pleasures. The prospect was of rebirth, a triumphant return.

If we wish to do justice to the historical enterprise, we must take past for what it was. And that means that we must resist the temptation to scour the past for examples or precursors of modern science. We must respect the way earlier generations approached nature, acknowledging that although it may differ from the modern way, it is nonetheless of interest because it is part of our intellectual ancestry.

Native Americans cured Cartier's men of scurvy near Montreal in 1535. They repaired Francis Drake's Golden Hind in California so he could complete his round-the-world voyage in 1579. Lewis and Clark's expedition to the Pacific Northwest was made possible by tribe after tribe of American Indians, with help from two Shoshone guides, Sacagawea and Toby, who served as interpreters. When Admiral Peary discovered the North Pole, the first person there was probably neither the European American Peary nor the African American Matthew Henson, his assistant, but their four Inuit guides, men and women on whom the entire expedition relied. Our histories fail to mention such assistance. They portray proud Western conquerors bestriding the world like the Colossus at Rhodes. So long as our textbooks hide from us the roles that people of color have played in exploration, from at least 6000 BC to to the twentieth century, they encourage us to look to Europe and its extensions as the seat of all knowledge and intelligence. So long as they say "discover," they imply that whites are the only people who really matter. So long as they simply celebrate Columbus, rather than teach both sides of his exploit, they encourage us to identify with white Western exploitation rather than study it.

One such monster lived around 600 B.C. and was the slave of a Greek nobleman named Iadmon who lived on Samos. This unfortunate was a hunchback described as having "an enormous head with slit eyes, a long, misshaped countenance, a large mouth and bowed legs." A servant girl meeting him asked in horror, "Are you a baboon?" Because he was cut off from humanity by his revolting appearance, this monster made friends with animals. He told numerous short tales with animal heroes illustrating the weaknesses of people. His stories were so biting and his looks so disgusting that he was finally killed by a mob. His name was Aesop.

The Chinese had first learned of the Roman Empire in 139 B.C., when the emperor Wudi had sent an envoy, Zhang Qian, past the deserts to seek allies to the west. Zhang Qian traveled for twelve years to what is now Turkistan and back and reported on the astounding discovery that there was a fairly advanced civilization to the west. In 104 B.C. and 102 B.C., Chinese armies reached the area, a former Greek kingdom called Sogdiana with its capital in Samarkand, where they met and defeated a force partly composed of captive Roman soldiers.

According to a well-known hieroglyphic inscription, the tribes of Israel were a significant, established presence in Canaan no later than 1212 BC. There is a vast body of archaeological evidence that demonstrates the ancient Israelite/Jewish presence in Israel/Judea as far back as 925 BC.18 This historical presence is verified in the ancient records of the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Muslim empires. The Arab conquest did not occur until AD 638. An exercise in elementary arithmetic reveals that the Jewish people were there eighteen and one-half centuries before the arrival of the Arabs. Despite being conquered many times, the Jewish people have had a constant, uninterrupted presence in the land of Israel for over thirty centuries. The Arabs and Islam have been there less than fourteen centuries. It has conveniently been forgotten that the Jews and Christians were there first. Furthermore, in the thirty centuries preceding the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, there have been only two periods when there was an independent, internationally recognized state in the area that now comprises Israel. Both of them were Jewish states. Even when this land was part of the Arab empire (AD 638 through AD 1099), there was never an independent Arab state in ‘Palestine,’ by that name or any other. No wonder the Arabs are donating millions of dollars to U.S. colleges for Middle Eastern schools of study. They have a lot of hard historical evidence to rewrite in the young minds of students.

NOTHING should more deeply shame the modern student than the recency and inadequacy of his acquaintance with India. Here is a vast peninsula of nearly two million square miles; two-thirds as large as the United States, and twenty times the size of its master, Great Britain; 320,000,000 souls, more than in all North and South America combined, or one-fifth of the population of the earth; an impressive continuity of development and civilization from Mohenjo-daro, 2900 B.C. or earlier, to Gandhi, Raman and Tagore; faiths compassing every stage from barbarous idolatry to the most subtle and spiritual pantheism; philosophers playing a thousand variations on one monistic theme from the Upanishads eight centuries before Christ to Shankara eight centuries after him; scientists developing astronomy three thousand years ago, and winning Nobel prizes in our own time; a democratic constitution of untraceable antiquity in the villages, and wise and beneficent rulers like Ashoka and Akbar in the capitals; minstrels singing great epics almost as old as Homer, and poets holding world audiences today; artists raising gigantic temples for Hindu gods from Tibet to Ceylon and from Cambodia to Java, or carving perfect palaces by the score for Mogul kings and queens—this is the India that patient scholarship is now opening up, like a new intellectual continent, to that Western mind which only yesterday thought civilization an exclusively European thing.I

Greek writers of the fifth century B.C. have a way of speaking of, an attitude towards, religion, as though it were wholly a thing of joyful confidence, a friendly fellowship with the gods, whose service is but a high festival for man. In Homer sacrifice is but, as it were, the signal for a banquet of abundant roast flesh and sweet wine; we hear nothing of fasting, of cleansing, and atonement. This we might perhaps explain as part of the general splendid unreality of the heroic saga, but sober historians of the fifth century B.C. express the same spirit. Thucydides is assuredly by nature no reveller, yet religion is to him in the main 'a rest from toil.' He makes Pericles say: 'Moreover we have provided for our spirit very many opportunities of recreation, by the celebration of games and sacrifices throughout the year.

The Idiot. I have read it once, and find that I don't remember the events of the book very well--or even all the principal characters. But mostly the 'portrait of a truly beautiful person' that dostoevsky supposedly set out to write in that book. And I remember how Myshkin seemed so simple when I began the book, but by the end, I realized how I didn't understand him at all. the things he did. Maybe when I read it again it will be different. But the plot of these dostoevsky books can hold such twists and turns for the first-time reader-- I guess that's b/c he was writing most of these books as serials that had to have cliffhangers and such. But I make marks in my books, mostly at parts where I see the author's philosophical points standing in the most stark relief. My copy of Moby Dick is positively full of these marks. The Idiot, I find has a few... Part 3, Section 5. The sickly Ippolit is reading from his 'Explanation' or whatever its called. He says his convictions are not tied to him being condemned to death. It's important for him to describe, of happiness: "you may be sure that Columbus was happy not when he had discovered America, but when he was discovering it." That it's the process of life--not the end or accomplished goals in it--that matter. Well. Easier said than lived! Part 3, Section 6. more of Ippolit talking--about a christian mindset. He references Jesus's parable of The Word as seeds that grow in men, couched in a description of how people are interrelated over time; its a picture of a multiplicity. Later in this section, he relates looking at a painting of Christ being taken down from the cross, at Rogozhin's house. The painting produced in him an intricate metaphor of despair over death "in the form of a huge machine of the most modern construction which, dull and insensible, has aimlessly clutched, crushed, and swallowed up a great priceless Being, a Being worth all nature and its laws, worth the whole earth, which was created perhaps solely for the sake of the advent of this Being." The way Ippolit's ideas are configured, here, reminds me of the writings of Gilles Deleuze. And the phrasing just sort of remidns me of the way everyone feels--many people feel crushed by the incomprehensible machine, in life. Many people feel martyred in their very minor ways. And it makes me think of the concept that a narrative religion like Christianity uniquely allows for a kind of socialized or externalized, shared experience of subjectivity. Like, we all know the story of this man--and it feels like our own stories at the same time. Part 4, Section 7. Myshkin's excitement (leading to a seizure) among the Epanchin's dignitary guests when he talks about what the nobility needs to become ("servants in order to be leaders"). I'm drawn to things like this because it's affirming, I guess, for me: "it really is true that we're absurd, that we're shallow, have bad habits, that we're bored, that we don't know how to look at things, that we can't understand; we're all like that." And of course he finds a way to make that into a good thing. which, it's pointed out by scholars, is very important to Dostoevsky philosophy--don't deny the earthly passions and problems in yourself, but accept them and incorporate them into your whole person. Me, I'm still working on that one.

Nietzsche’s words that relate to this with respect to masks and the processes of life. He speaks of three stages in the life of the spirit incarnate in each of us. Three transformations of the spirit, he calls it. The first is that of the camel which gets down on its knees and asks, “Put a load on me.” That’s the period of these dear little children. This is the just-born life that has come in and is receiving the imprint of the society. The primary mask. “Put a load on me. Teach me what I must know to live in this society.” Once heavily loaded, the camel struggles to its feet and goes out into the desert — into the desert of the realization of its own individual nature. This must follow the reception of the culture good. It must not precede it. First is humility, and obedience, and the reception of the primary mask. Then comes the turning inward, which happens automatically in adolescence, to find your own inward life. Nietzsche calls this the transformation of the camel into a lion. Then the lion attacks a dragon; and the dragon’s name is Thou Shalt. The dragon is the concretization of all those imprints that the society has put upon you. The function of the lion is to kill the dragon Thou Shalt. On every scale is a “Thou Shalt,” some of them dating from 2000 b.c., others from this morning’s newspaper. And, when the dragon Thou Shalt has been killed — that is to say, when you have made the transition from simple obedience to authority over your own life — the third transformation is to that of being a child moving spontaneously out of the energy of its own center. Nietzsche calls it a wheel rolling out of its own center.

[The Christian story] amounts to a refusal to affirm life. In the biblical tradition we have inherited, life is corrupt, and every natural impulse is sinful unless it has been circumcised or baptized. The serpent was the one who brought sin into the wold. And the woman was the one who handed the apple to man. This identification of the woman with sin, of the serpent with sin, and thus of life with sin, is the twist the has been given to the whole story in the biblical myth and doctrine of the Fall.... I don't know of it [the idea of woman as sinner...in other mythologies] elsewhere. The closest thing to it would be perhaps Pandora with Pandora's box, but that's not sin, that's just trouble. The idea in the biblical tradition of the all is that nature as we know it is corrupt, sex in itself is corrupt, and the female as the epitome of sex is a corrupter. Why was the knowledge of good and evil forbidden to Adam and Eve? Without that knowledge, we'd all be a bunch of babies still Eden, without any participation in life. Woman brings life into the world. Eve is the mother o this temporal wold. Formerly you had a dreamtime paradise there in the Garden of Eden – no time, no birth, no death – no life. The serpent, who dies and is resurrected, shedding its skin and renewing its life, is the lord of the central tree, where time and eternity come together. He is the primary god, actually, in the Garden of Eden. Yahweh, the one who walks there in the cool of the evening, is just a visitor. The Garden is the serpent's place. It is an old, old story. We have Sumerian seals from as early as 3500 B.C. showing the serpent and the tree and the goddess, with the goddess giving the fruit of life to a visiting male. The old mythology of he goddess is right there.... There is actually a historical explanation [of the change of this image of the serpent and the snake in Genesis] based on the coming of the Hebrews into Canaan. The principal divinity of the people of Canaan was the Goddess and associated with the Goddess is the serpent. This is the symbol of the mystery of life. The male-god-oriented groups rejected it. In other words, there is a historical rejection of the Mother Goddess implied in the story of the Garden of Eden. Moyers: It does seem that this story has done women a great disservice by casting Eve as responsible for the Fall. Why...? Campbell: They represent life. Man doesn't enter life except by woman, and so it is woman who brings us into this wold of pairs of opposites and suffering.... Male and female is one opposition. Another opposition is the human and God. Good and evil is a third opposition. The primary oppositions are the sexual and that between human beings and God. Then comes the idea of good and evil in the world. And so Adm and Eve have thrown themselves out of the Garden of Timeless Unity, you might say, just by that act of recognizing duality. To move out into the world, you have to act in terms of pairs of opposites.

I am a man and what I have to recapture is the whole past of the world, I am not responsible only for the slavery involved in Santo Domingo, every time man has contributed to the victory of the dignity of the spirit, every time a man has said no to an attempt to subjugate his fellows, I have felt solidarity with his act. In no way does my basic vocation have to be drawn from the past of peoples of color. In no way do I have to dedicate myself to reviving some black civilization unjustly ignored. I will not make myself the man of any past. My black skin is not a repository for specific values. Haven’t I got better things to do on this earth than avenge the blacks of the 17th century? I as a man of color do not have the right to hope that in the white man there will be a crystallization of guilt towards the past of my race. I as a man of color do not have the right of stamping down the pride of my former master. I have neither the right nor the duty to demand reparations for my subjugated ancestors. There is no black mission. There is no white burden. I do not want to be victim to the rules of a black world. Am I going to ask this white man to answer for the slave traders of the 17th century? Am I going to try by every means available to cause guilt to burgeon in their souls? I am not a slave to slavery that dehumanized my ancestors. It would be of enormous interest to discover a black literature or architecture from the 3rd century B.C, we would be overjoyed to learn of the existence of a correspondence between some black philosopher and Plato, but we can absolutely not see how this fact would change the lives of 8 year old kids working the cane fields of Martinique or Guadeloupe. I find myself in the world and I recognize I have one right alone: of demanding human behavior from the other.

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 to their highest limit. But you cannot see that, if you are careless; for it will not come of its own accord.

For now, the Simple Daily Practice means doing ONE thing every day. Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.

A disdain for the practical swept the ancient world. Plato urged astronomers to think about the heavens, but not to waste their time observing them. Aristotle believed that: “The lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.… The slave shares in his master’s life; the artisan is less closely connected with him, and only attains excellence in proportion as he becomes a slave. The meaner sort of mechanic has a special and separate slavery.” Plutarch wrote: “It does not of necessity follow that, if the work delight you with its grace, the one who wrought it is worthy of esteem.” Xenophon’s opinion was: “What are called the mechanical arts carry a social stigma and are rightly dishonoured in our cities.” As a result of such attitudes, the brilliant and promising Ionian experimental method was largely abandoned for two thousand years. Without experiment, there is no way to choose among contending hypotheses, no way for science to advance. The anti-empirical taint of the Pythagoreans survives to this day. But why? Where did this distaste for experiment come from? An explanation for the decline of ancient science has been put forward by the historian of science, Benjamin Farrington: The mercantile tradition, which led to Ionian science, also led to a slave economy. The owning of slaves was the road to wealth and power. Polycrates’ fortifications were built by slaves. Athens in the time of Pericles, Plato and Aristotle had a vast slave population. All the brave Athenian talk about democracy applied only to a privileged few. What slaves characteristically perform is manual labor. But scientific experimentation is manual labor, from which the slaveholders are preferentially distanced; while it is only the slaveholders—politely called “gentle-men” in some societies—who have the leisure to do science. Accordingly, almost no one did science. The Ionians were perfectly able to make machines of some elegance. But the availability of slaves undermined the economic motive for the development of technology. Thus the mercantile tradition contributed to the great Ionian awakening around 600 B.C., and, through slavery, may have been the cause of its decline some two centuries later. There are great ironies here.

At the end of the vacation, I took a steamer alone from Wuhan back up through the Yangtze Gorges. The journey took three days. One morning, as I was leaning over the side, a gust of wind blew my hair loose and my hairpin fell into the river. A passenger with whom I had been chatting pointed to a tributary which joined the Yangtze just where we were passing, and told me a story.In 33 B.C., the emperor of China, in an attempt to appease the country's powerful northern neighbors, the Huns, decided to send a woman to marry the barbarian king. He made his selection from the portraits of the 3,000 concubines in his court, many of whom he had never seen. As she was for a barbarian, he selected the ugliest portrait, but on the day of her departure he discovered that the woman was in fact extremely beautiful. Her portrait was ugly because she had refused to bribe the court painter. The emperor ordered the artist to be executed, while the lady wept, sitting by a river, at having to leave her country to live among the barbarians. The wind carried away her hairpin and dropped it into the river as though it wanted to keep something of hers in her homeland. Later on, she killed herself. Legend had it that where her hairpin dropped, the river turned crystal clear, and became known as the Crystal River. My fellow passenger told me this was the tributary we were passing. With a grin, he declared: "Ah, bad omen! You might end up living in a foreign land and marrying a barbarian!" I smiled faintly at the traditional Chinese obsession about other races being 'barbarians," and wondered whether this lady of antiquity might not actually have been better off marrying the 'barbarian' king. She would at least be in daily contact with the grassland, the horses, and nature. With the Chinese emperor, she was living in a luxurious prison, without even a proper tree, which might enable the concubines to climb a wall and escape. I thought how we were like the frogs at the bottom of the well in the Chinese legend, who claimed that the sky was only as big as the round opening at the top of their well. I felt an intense and urgent desire to see the world. At the time I had never spoken with a foreigner, even though I was twenty-three, and had been an English language student for nearly two years. The only foreigners I had ever even set eyes on had been in Peking in 1972. A foreigner, one of the few 'friends of China," had come to my university once. It was a hot summer day and I was having a nap when a fellow student burst into our room and woke us all by shrieking: "A foreigner is here! Let's go and look at the foreigner!" Some of the others went, but I decided to stay and continue my snooze. I found the whole idea of gazing, zombie like rather ridiculous. Anyway, what was the point of staring if we were forbidden to open our mouths to him, even though he was a 'friend of China'? I had never even heard a foreigner speaking, except on one single Linguaphone record. When I started learning the language, I had borrowed the record and a phonograph, and listened to it at home in Meteorite Street. Some neighbors gathered in the courtyard, and said with their eyes wide open and their heads shaking, "What funny sounds!" They asked me to play the record over and over again.

In the modern era, teachers and scholarship have traditionally laid strenuous emphasis on the fact that Briseis, the woman taken from Achilles in Book One, was his géras, his war prize, the implication being that her loss for Achilles meant only loss of honor, an emphasis that may be a legacy of the homoerotic culture in which the classics and the Iliad were so strenuously taught—namely, the British public-school system: handsome and glamorous Achilles didn’t really like women, he was only upset because he’d lost his prize! Homer’s Achilles, however, above all else, is spectacularly adept at articulating his own feelings, and in the Embassy he says, “‘Are the sons of Atreus alone among mortal men the ones / who love their wives? Since any who is a good man, and careful, / loves her who is his own and cares for her, even as I now / loved this one from my heart, though it was my spear that won her’ ” (9.340ff.). The Iliad ’s depiction of both Achilles and Patroklos is nonchalantly heterosexual. At the conclusion of the Embassy, when Agamemnon’s ambassadors have departed, “Achilles slept in the inward corner of the strong-built shelter, / and a woman lay beside him, one he had taken from Lesbos, / Phorbas’ daughter, Diomede of the fair colouring. / In the other corner Patroklos went to bed; with him also / was a girl, Iphis the fair-girdled, whom brilliant Achilles / gave him, when he took sheer Skyros” (9.663ff.). The nature of the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos played an unlikely role in a lawsuit of the mid-fourth century B.C., brought by the orator Aeschines against one Timarchus, a prominent politician in Athens who had charged him with treason. Hoping to discredit Timarchus prior to the treason trial, Aeschines attacked Timarchus’ morality, charging him with pederasty. Since the same charge could have been brought against Aeschines, the orator takes pains to differentiate between his impulses and those of the plaintiff: “The distinction which I draw is this—to be in love with those who are beautiful and chaste is the experience of a kind-hearted and generous soul”; Aeschines, Contra Timarchus 137, in C. D. Adams, trans., The Speeches of Aeschines (Cambridge, MA, 1958), 111. For proof of such love, Aeschines cited the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos; his citation is of great interest for representing the longest extant quotation of Homer by an ancient author. 32