“The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.” MomentsStoriesOrderCultureMoralCivilizationIndiaComplexesTalesIslamicDelicateEvidentConquestDiscouragingBarbariansInvadingMultiplying Author:Will Durant
“No great, inspiring culture of the future can be built upon the moral principle of relativism. For at its bottom such a culture holds that nothing is better than anything else, and that all things are in themselves equally meaningless. Except for the fragments of faith (in progress, in compassion, in conscience, in hope) to which it still clings, illegitimately, such a culture teaches every one of its children that life is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.” ChildrenStillsLife IsCultureCompassionMoralPrinciplesTeachProgressConscienceBuiltAll ThingsBottomTalesIdiotMeaninglessFragmentsRelativismMoral PrinciplesSignifying Author:Michael Novak
“Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over. There are tales that are older than most countries, tales that have long outlasted the cultures and the buildings in which they were first told.” WayFirstsLongMadeBookCountryHumanityCultureBuildingLessonsBuiltCommunicateTalesLearning Lessons Book:The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction Source: The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction
“It has been said, "History is written by the victors." I take this to mean we can make ourselves victorious by writing, and then rewriting our own stories. In a country and culture so dominated by media, by the manipulation of words and stories, telling the tales of people whose stories historically have not been told is a radical act and I believe an act that can change the world and help rewrite history.” PeopleWorldWritingBelieveMeanHas BeensSaidCountryHelpingStoriesCultureI BelieveWrittenMediaTalesRadicalChanging The WorldManipulationRewriting Author:Jennifer Beals
“Jokes spread around the world and embed themselves in our shared culture; the most resonant of them get lodged in the language in the same way as clichés or old wives' tales do.” WorldWayCultureLanguageWifeJokesSpreadTalesAround The WorldOld Wives Tales Book:Only Joking: What's So Funny About Making People Laugh? Source: Only Joking: What's So Funny About Making People Laugh?
“The narrative of so many fairy tales are timeless in so many different cultures, and they have been since the dawn of man. They represent escapism, but they all feature themes that have such poignancy in a modern world.” MenWorldHas BeensDifferentCultureModernTalesNarrativeDawnFeaturesThemeFairyFairy TaleTimelessModern WorldEscapismDifferent CulturesPoignancy Author:Lily Cole