First Time Looking In Vain For Footnotes: “The Jews’ unique position as perpetual outsiders led them to adopt and promote a wide range of cosmopolitan and inclusive business strategies and ethical standards…. Jews were middlemen, whose job was to promote fair and open trade among other peoples.” (p. 6). Funny, I thought the Jews’ “unique position as perpetual outsiders” (”unique” except for lepers, women, Christians in the Muslim world and vice versa, that sort of thing) led them to adopt and promote a wide range of cosmopolitan and highly exclusive business strategies based largely on the fact that their math skills stayed several centuries ahead of the rest of Europe for most of the Middle Ages and that they had a ready-made secret language in Hebrew.
- Naomi Chana, on reading “Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism”

So present was the fear of sexual violence, writes Paul the Deacon, an eighth-century chronicler, that certain Lombard women ‘used to put the flesh of raw chickens under the band that held up their breasts; this, once the heat spoiled and putrefied it, gave off a horribly foul odor. Thus when the Avars [another invading tribe] tried to violate them they found that they could not bear the stench, and thinking that the smell was natural to these women, they ran away, cursing loudly that all Lombard women stink.
-Clifford R. Backman

[Louis III] seemed to be a ruler of genuine promise, but he died in an unfortunate accident. Returning from a battle against the Vikings, he saw a young woman on a country lane who appealed to him. He chased after her on his horse. She ducked under a stone archway. He didn’t.
-Clifford R. Backman

Louis IX of France once had the contents of a chamberpot poured on his head as he strolled through Paris early one morning. He stormed to the door of the house and demanded to know who had done it. It turned out that the guilty person was a university student who had risen early in order to study. Louis was so impressed by the young man’s dedication that he gave him a scholarship. (This is not recommended as a way of financing a college education.)
-Clifford R. Backman

The world is a great book, of which they who never stir from home read only a page.
-Augustine of Hippo

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
-Orson Welles to Joseph Cotten in The Third Man

“The Earth is degenerating these days. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer mind their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.”
-Assyrian stone tablet, c.2800bc

WWII was going fine until the Americans asked if they could join in, and the whole thing turned into a free-for-all.
-Beyond the Fringe

I don’t know exactly what democracy is. But we need more of it.
-Anonymous Chinese Student during protests in Tianamen Square, Beijing, 1989

The sun never sets on the British empire because Britain is in the east and the sun sets in the west.
-unknown history student

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.
-W. R. Inge

There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.
-George Armstrong Custer

But besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

I am become death, shatterer of worlds.
-Robert J. Oppenheimer (citing from the Bhagavadgita, after witnessing the world’s first nuclear explosion)

Scitum est inter caecos luscum regnare posse.
(It is well known, that among the blind the one-eyed man is king.)
-Gerard Didier Erasmus (c. 1465-1536)

Veni, vidi, vici.
(I came, I saw, I conquered.)
-Gaius Julius Caesar (c. 102-44 BC)

Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.
-Euripides

He (Richard I) was so anxious for a fight that on his way to Palestine in the third crusade he quarrelled with the King of France, the Emporer Henry VI, and the ruler of the Byzantine Empire. This made it a little difficult to return home when the Crusade failed.
-Joseph Strayer

“I am dying, with the help of many doctors.”
-Alexander The Great

I was here before the great temples at Luxor, the Colossus of Rhodes. I walked with Aneas at Carthage, Alexander at Phillipi. I saw the horror of the Black Death. I heard the hersies of Galileo, watched the Sistine Chapel transformed. I am Helen to Menaleaus, I am Geraldine to Christabel; I am the Vlad of desire, I am as old as the world is young.
-Inscription found on the underside of an altar capstone, village church; Scarpino, Sicily, 1944.

This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of soul destroying hatred, the monstrous product of former wrongs and shames.
-Winston Churchill, commenting on Adolf Hitler

There is a great deal of romantic folklore surrounding the Celtic peoples and their Gods. Some starry-eyed folk believe that the Celts were noble knights, others that they were a pure, matriarchal society suppressed by the Pale Patriarchal Penis People, or by the early Christian church. Richly attired faerie rides from Victorian illustrations, and billowy Celtic Revival poetry contribute to an image of an impossibly pure and upright people with sage philosophers and Arthurian kings of great moral depth and mythically perfect stature. I have even heard it asserted that the Celts were a peaceful people, and that they and their Gods never fought battles or participated in any violence. Although it may be nice to think so, none of these “noble savage” or “lost golden age” visions are accurate.
-from “Truth Against The World: Ethics and Modern Celtic Paganism”

Surviving and winning are two radically different concepts, even in combat…just ask the Germans who survived WWII.
-from the alt.flame FAQ

Fire, though it may be quenched, will not become cool.
-The Hitopadesa (600?-1100? A.D.)

The Romans have a profound dislike of long haired men. It must come from their deep seated fear of the Gauls, who never cut their hair or beards and have been for so long the only people to withstand Rome. They call Gaul Gallia Comata, Long Haired Gaul, or at least they used to, and no doubt nannies still scare children with tales of the gauls of the long hair, coming to murder them in the night.
-From Scipio Africanus, a fictionalized biography. And people wonder where western culture gets it’s odder quirks.

Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.