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" Beard's secret is always to be slightly on the edge but to pull back from disaster at the last minute. "
Mary Beard
Back
Always
Disaster
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" Grey is my hair colour. I really can't see why I should change it. "
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" My fantasy is going into a men's loo. And listening to what they say. "
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They Say
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" I'm exploring the long history of women, first of all, being silenced and, secondly, not being taken seriously in the political and public sphere. It's a call to action through understanding and through looking at ourselves again and trying to reformulate the whole question of women and power. "
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" I'd quite like to be in Caligula's court - living in the back room somewhere and just being able to observe. "
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" There is no argument that I won't take seriously. "
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Argument
Seriously
Take
" We make two mistakes about the ancient world. One is to assume they were better than us - that, for instance, the ancient Olympics didn't involve money-making. The opposite mistake, and just as common, is to think our Olympics are much more civilised than ancient sporting competitions. Neither is true. "
Mary Beard
Think
Better
Mistake
" We are sold the idea of a refugee as a tiny child sitting crying, as a way of raising money, but elderly ladies and kids largely can't move. The demographic is mostly young men. "
Mary Beard
Men
Sitting
Way
" You don't overturn x-thousand years of patriarchy in a generation. "
Mary Beard
Patriarchy
Generation
Years
" I would summarise my politics very simply as the maverick left and proud. "
Mary Beard
Maverick
Would
Proud
" I loved 'Gladiator,' and I thought its depiction of gladiatorial combat, although it was an aggrandizing picture, was cleverly and expertly done. "
Mary Beard
Combat
Done
Thought
" It wasn't until I got to Cambridge that I discovered active discrimination against women. "
Mary Beard
Discrimination
Active
Against
" 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. "
Mary Beard
Attention
Broken
Silence
" In 1984, I returned to Newnham College at Cambridge University to teach after completing my Ph.D. there a couple of years earlier. Almost all of my colleagues in the university's classics department were men, and my office at the all-women's college was in the dorm. "
Mary Beard
Office
Men
Colleagues
" If being a decent soul is being maternal, then fine. "
Mary Beard
Soul
Then
Being
" Nobody but an idiot would pretend that they had an error-proof way of choosing the 'best' out of hundreds of perfectly qualified applicants - not for university or for anything. "
Mary Beard
Idiot
University
Way
" Democracy requires information. Plato knew that informed decision-making requires knowledge. "
Mary Beard
Knew
Democracy
Information
" People who exploit others come to spend an enormous amount of energy wondering about and justifying that exploitation. "
Mary Beard
Energy
People
Others
" Fate has it in for me to be an exhibit: that funny old lady from the telly. "
Mary Beard
Me
Old Lady
Old
" One of the downsides of working in antiquity is that you don't have many female voices, but you certainly have a lot of male terror about the potential of women's power. It shows you very clearly that the most oppressive cultures tend to be afraid of those whom they oppress. "
Mary Beard
Potential
Women
Power
" I'm very interested in how people in the 19th century travelled to Greece. "
Mary Beard
Century
How
Interested
" I don't want to see a world in which women can communicate on Twitter, but their actual voices are not heard. "
Mary Beard
See
Heard
Want
" I was nearly struck by lightning on an excavation in Turkey. "
Mary Beard
Turkey
Nearly
Struck
" I think that what will help women get into positions of power - well, day nurseries, equal pay, family-friendly working hours. And I think all that's important. I used to think it was the solution. I now think it's enabling, and it's important, but still we have got head work to do about this. "
Mary Beard
Day
Work
Women
" In real life, Oxford and Cambridge are two excellent universities, like many others in the country. They are full of highly intelligent, hard-working, and quite ordinary students and teachers. "
Mary Beard
Teachers
Life
Intelligent
" Playing around with other people's husbands when you were 17 was bad news. Yes, I was a very naughty girl. "
Mary Beard
Girl
Bad
Naughty
" 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. "
Mary Beard
Ancient
Conversation
Talk
" Wherever possible, I try to see things from the other side of the dividing line and to read civilisation 'against the grain.' "
Mary Beard
Side
Possible
Line
" 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. "
Mary Beard
Speak
Say
Out
" One of its most powerful weapons has always been 'barbarity': 'we' know that 'we' are civilised by contrasting ourselves with those we deem to be un-civilised, with those who do not - or cannot be trusted to - share our values. "
Mary Beard
Powerful
Values
Most
" When you look at me on the telly and say, 'She should be on 'The Undateables,'' you are looking at a 59-year-old woman. That is what 59-year-old women who have not had work done look like. Get it? "
Mary Beard
Women
Me
Woman