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Greeks Quotes

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Greeks Quotes

“The Greeks made Space the subject-matter of a science of supreme simplicity and certainty. Out of it grew, in the mind of classical antiquity, the idea of pure science. Geometry became one of the most powerful expressions of that sovereignty of the intellect that inspired the thought of those times. At a later epoch, when the intellectual despotism of the Church, which had been maintained through the Middle Ages, had crumbled, and a wave of scepticism threatened to sweep away all that had seemed most fixed, those who believed in Truth clung to Geometry as to a rock, and it was the highest ideal of every scientist to carry on his science 'more geometrico.”

MindMatterTruthScienceBeliefSpacePowerInspireSimplicityIntellectAstronomyThoughtCertaintySkepticismMathematicianPhysicistMiddle AgesGeometryDespotismAntiquityScepticismGreeksAncient GreeksInstitute For Advanced Study
Author:Hermann Weyl
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“Beauty, on the other hand, is always on this side. It is in this world, in the present, firm; it can be touched with the hand. That our sexual appetites can taste it is beauty's precondition. Sensuality is, therefore, essential. It confirms beauty. However, beauty can never be reached, because the susceptibilities of sense, more than anything else, block attainment of it. The method by which the Greeks expressed beauty through sculpture was a wise one. I am a novelist. Of all the rubbish that has been invented in the modern times, the profession I have chosen is the worst. Don't you think that for the expression of beauty it is the most bungling and low-class of professions?”

BeautySexualitySensualityGreeksYukio Mishima
Book:Forbidden Colors
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“You know, Mac,”Cadmus said still looking out the window. “We may have to work on the way we tell our story …apparently it’s not amusing enough.” “I’ll try to include a joke between ‘he bled to death’and ‘the city burned’.”Machaon responded tersely.”

WarFunnyGreekStorySarcasmGreek MythologyJokeGodsAmusingDark HumorGreek GodsSarcastic HumorOdysseusTrojansTrojan HorseTrojan WarGreeksGreek Myths
Book:Chasing Odysseus
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“Things don't always look as they seem. Some stars, for example, look like bright pinholes, but when you get them pegged under a microscope you find you're looking at a globular cluster—a million stars that, to us, presents as a single entity. On a less dramatic note there are triples, like Alpha Centauri, which up close turns out to be a double star and a red dwarf in close proximity. There's an indigenous tribe in Africa that tells of life coming from the second star in Alpha Centauri, the one no one can see without a high-powered observatory telescope. come to think of it, the Greeks, the Aboriginals, and the Plains Indians all lived continents apart and all, independently, looked at the same septuplet knot of the Pleiades and believed them to be seven young girls running away from something that threatened to hurt them. Make of it what you will.”

StarsDesignPerspectiveCoincidenceAboriginalGreeksPleiadesBrian FitzgeraldAlpha CentauriGlobular ClusterPlains Indians
Book:My Sister's Keeper
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“The ancient Greeks devised a term that accurately represented every inexplicable feeling that tormented humanity. Hoping that each word carried some relief within its letters. As if somehow a vague definition of such an intricate concept will fix the feeling of emptiness that follows its experience. But there was a word that the Greeks had not thought of: one that could define the smell of death. Evidently, there were a myriad of adjectives that could define this morbid aroma, yet I wondered if there were any words that could truly capture the revolting feeling that this smell evoked. It was an absolutely gut-wrenching sensation, and it vexed me so much that I couldn't pinpoint it to a single, distinct element of speech. Fuck the Greeks.”

MysteryMurderThrillerGreek MythologyThriller BooksGreeksAncient Greeks
Book:Cabin Fever
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“In the Timaeus dialogues, these being a record of discussions between the Greek Statesman Solon and an Egyptian priest, Plato reports the following: 'You Greeks are all children... you have no belief rooted in the old tradition and no knowledge hoary with age. And the reason is this. There have been and will be many different calamities to destroy mankind, the greatest of them by fire and water, and lesser one by countless other means... You remember only one deluge, though there have been many.”

TraditionEgyptPlatoGreeceDeep Human HistoryCataclysmDelugePrehistoryGreeks
Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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“Where I come from money isn't to be talked about or flaunted in front of strangers. But Ajax snatched up the wad and counted it out loud, ceremonially, slapping the notes down on the table while the witnesses mouthed the amounts. It was all so public and embarrassing.”

ForeignersGreeks
Book:It's All Greek to Me!: A Tale of a Mad Dog and an Englishman, Ruins, Retsina--and Real Greeks
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“To Judaism Christians ascribe the glory of having been the first religion to teach a pure monotheism. But monotheism existed long before the Jews attained to it. Zoroaster and his earliest followers were monotheists, dualism being a later development of the Persian theology. The adoption of monotheism by the Jews, which occurred only at a very late period in their history, was not, however, the result of a divine revelation, or even of an intellectual superiority, for the Jews were immeasurably inferior intellectually to the Greeks and Romans, to the Hindus and Egyptians, and to the Assyrians and Babylonians, who are supposed to have retained a belief in polytheism. This monotheism of the Jews has chiefly the result of a religious intolerance never before equaled and never since surpassed, except in the history of Christianity and Mohammedanism, the daughters of Judaism. Jehovistic priests and kings tolerated no rivals of their god and made death the penalty for disloyalty to him. The Jewish nation became monotheistic for the same reason that Spain, in the clutches of the Inquisition, became entirely Christian.”

IslamIntoleranceGodsJudaismSpainRevelationJehovahInquisitionJewsDualismReligious IntoleranceMonotheismEgyptiansRomansPolytheismGreeksHindusZoroastrianismAssyriansPersian TheologyZoroasterBabyloniansMohammedanism
Book:Christ
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“Ukanda wa Gaza ni jimbo lenye miji minne na kambi mbalimbali za wakimbizi za Umoja wa Mataifa – lenye urefu wa kati ya kilometa 41 au maili 25 na lenye upana wa kati ya kilometa 6 mpaka 12 au maili 3.7 mpaka 7.5, pamoja na eneo la jumla la kilometa za mraba 365 au maili za mraba 141. Jimbo hili liliwahi kutawaliwa na Wamisri, Wakaanani, Waisraeli, Wasiria, Wababelonia, Wagiriki, Warumi, Waturuki, Waingereza, na Wapalestina, na limekuwa uwanja wa vita kwa karne nyingi kwa sababu za kidini na kihistoria. Ukanda wa Gaza uko chini ya Palestina. Uko chini ya serikali ya Hamas.”

GovernmentReligionHistoryTownsBritishUnited NationsHistoriaRefugeesHamasBattlefieldPalestiniansEgyptiansOttomansGaza StripGreeksSerikaliAssyriansIsraelitesDiniProvinceUkanda Wa GazaBabyloniansCanaanitesUmoja Wa MataifaWaisraeliWamisri12 Kilometers141 Square Miles25 Miles3 7 Miles365 Square Kilometers41 Kilometers6 Kilometers7 5 MilesJimboKilometa 12Kilometa 41Kilometa 6Kilometa Za Mraba 365Maili 25Maili 3 7Maili 7 5Maili Za Mraba 141MijiUwanja Wa VitaWababeloniaWagirikiWaingerezaWakaananiWakimbiziWapalestinaWasiriaWaturuki
Author:Enock Maregesi
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“We do not know whether [Hipparchus] drew maps--perhaps he did--but the truth is that in his day he could not possibly have applied his projections to the globe because the necessary data, in the form of correct findings of latitudes and longitudes of a very large number of places over the known areas of the earth, were not available. This was the weakness of all Greek cartographic science. In Greek times mathematics was in advance of mechanical instrumentation: There was no instrument for easily and correctly determining the longitude of places. However, the Piri Re'is and the other maps we went on to study, seemed to suggest that such an instrument or instruments had once existed, and had been used by people who knew very closely the correct size of the earth. Moreover, it looks as if this people had visited most of the earth. They seem to have been quite well acquainted with the Americas, and to have mapped the coasts of Antarctica.”

ScienceHistoryMapsDeep Human HistoryAncient CivilizationsCartographyGreeksAncient Maps
Book:Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age
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“...Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed all mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes. [Letters to John Taylor, 1814, XVIII, p. 484]”

KnowledgeIslamPriestsHinduismMonopolyMuslimReformationPriesthoodClergyHinduScience Vs ReligionRomansCeltsGreeksProtestantSectTeutonsPersiansChaldeans
Book:The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
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“[D]idn't Aristarchus and the Pythagoreans propose heliocentrism in ancient times? If only they had prevailed, we might have had Real Science millennia sooner. What was their evidence? Well, you see, fire is nobler than earth and the center is a nobler position. So fire has to be in the center. QED. There are many names for this sort of thinking, but "scientific" is not one of them.”

ScienceHistoryFireEvidenceNobleReasoningCenterGreeksHeliocentrism
Author:Michael Flynn
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“The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India. The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated ... The importance of this invention is more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyod the two greatest men of antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius.”

NumbersMathematicsZeroGreeksMathematiciansNullity
Author:Pierre Simon de Laplace
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