Friday, December 24, 2004

Quotations #030

"We think in order to do." -- unofficial slogan of the journal Race and Class.

Seneca imagines a pupil who says, "Zeno said this." He replies: "What do you say? How long will you march under someone else's banner? . . . Now bring out something of your own." -- from the foreword by Martha C. Nussbaum in: ALIVE AT THE CORE: Exemplary Approaches to General Education in the Humanities, by Michael Nelson and Associates

"And so we are asking for amnesty for the gods of our fathers, the gods of our homeland. It is reasonable to assume that whatever each of us worships can be considered one and the same. We look up at the same stars, the same sky is above us all, the same universe encompasses us. What difference does it make which system each of us uses to find the truth? It is not by just one route that man can arrive at so great a mystery." -- Symmachus, Dispatches to the Emperor, appealing the removal of the traditional altar of Roman Victory from the Senate by a Christian Emperor. Jo-Ann Shelton, ed., As the Romans Did, pp. 390-391.

"A historian has to learn to be forgiving." -- Michael Luick-Thrams

"The meaning of the meaning of life, nor beauty either, has nothing to do with hats." -- Carol Emshwiller, "The Project"

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