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All Quotes by author - Mary Beard

" All religions throughout history have been concerned about - and have sometimes fought over - what it means to represent God, and they have found elegant, intriguing, and awkward ways to confront that dilemma. "

" A lot of people will always say, 'I really know nothing about the ancient world.' But there's lots and lots of things people know. Partly, they've been encouraged to think they're ignorant about it. In some ways, the job to do is show people that they know much more than they'd like to admit. "

" A lot of sexism is just very silly... and the best response is laughter and ridicule. "

" At 16, I got into local-education archaeology classes - you got to go to summer digs. It allowed me to be both intellectual and a bad girl with a wicked social life every evening! "

" Barring some sociopaths, probably, there is nobody who doesn't care about their appearance. "

" Beard's secret is always to be slightly on the edge but to pull back from disaster at the last minute. "

" Classics isn't about the ancient world. It's partly about the ancient world, but it's about our conversation. It's how we try to talk to antiquity. "

" Democracy requires information. Plato knew that informed decision-making requires knowledge. "

" English country towns are often seen as a cultural wasteland, but the more cut off you are, the more the need to create things, to make your own culture. "

" Fate has it in for me to be an exhibit: that funny old lady from the telly. "

" For whatever reason, some sorts of women's silence were broken by MeToo. This is the optimistic bit. And that will lead to a much more careful attention to women's voices. "

" Gender is a key marker of power and powerlessness. Most of the structures of how our world works are biased in terms of men. "

" Greek myths, early Roman history, is configured around violence against women. And I think we need to get in there, get our hands dirty, face it, and see why and how it was. "

" Grey is my hair colour. I really can't see why I should change it. "

" History is how we have learnt to think about ourselves. It's not as though the Greeks and Romans are static entities out there to be discovered and translated. We make them speak, we talk to them, and they inform what we say. "

" However judicious academics may be - not like me - they are all taught to see through crap. "

" I do not think that the lives of women of my generation, as a class, were blighted by the way the power differentials between men and women operated. We wanted to change those power differentials; we also had a good time. "

" I don't think that we are completely dominated by what we have inherited from the past, but it is the case that as far back as you can go - just to Homer, but also to the literature of Rome, the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance - what you will find is that women's voices are not taken seriously. "

" I don't want to see a world in which women can communicate on Twitter, but their actual voices are not heard. "

" I'd quite like to be in Caligula's court - living in the back room somewhere and just being able to observe. "

" If being a decent soul is being maternal, then fine. "

" If talking about arts means being pretentious, a bit like being a wine critic, then I don't feel comfy with that. You can get a lot from paintings without getting mystical about brush strokes. "

" If women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather than women? "

" If you ask me what is civilisation, it's little more than an act of faith. "

" If you say to a group of women professors, 'Close your eyes and think of a professor,' what they will see is a guy. I will. And I'll stop myself and think, 'Hey, hang on, what am I doing here?' "

" I have always hated fancy dress parties. "

" I have always thought the women's movement traded too much on outrage and not enough on ridicule. "

" I have lots of heroes and heroines, mostly unsung and including my husband. "

" I knew that Trump was ghastly. I knew I'd vote for Hillary if I had a vote. "

" I loved 'Gladiator,' and I thought its depiction of gladiatorial combat, although it was an aggrandizing picture, was cleverly and expertly done. "

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