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" Fate has it in for me to be an exhibit: that funny old lady from the telly. "
Mary Beard
Me
Old Lady
Old
Related Quotes:
" It's a bit naff, but there is something exciting about pulling a bit of pottery out of the ground that's 2,000 years old. "
Mary Beard
Out
About
Exciting
" One of the great things about history is that it sort of isn't a done deal - ever. The historical texts and the historical evidence that you use is always somehow giving you different answers because you're asking it different questions. "
Mary Beard
Giving
History
Questions
" What I find very interesting is, we're not enthralled by the ancient world, and we've escaped all kinds of ancient preconceptions and assumptions and prejudices. But, nevertheless, we still make that connection between authoritative speech and male speech. "
Mary Beard
Interesting
Connection
World
" I receive something we might euphemistically call an 'inappropriately hostile' response - that is to say, more than fair criticism or even fair anger - every time I speak on radio or television. "
Mary Beard
Criticism
Time
Speak
" We have never escaped a certain male cultural desire for women's silence. "
Mary Beard
Never
Cultural
Women
" 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? "
Mary Beard
Rather
Women
Need
" 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
" I'm an academic. I argue; I engage with people. "
Mary Beard
Academic
Argue
Engage
" It's great fun being an academic because you have a certain licence to be a bit of a joker. "
Mary Beard
Great
Joker
You
" I would summarise my politics very simply as the maverick left and proud. "
Mary Beard
Maverick
Would
Proud
" 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
" People who exploit others come to spend an enormous amount of energy wondering about and justifying that exploitation. "
Mary Beard
Energy
People
Others
" However judicious academics may be - not like me - they are all taught to see through crap. "
Mary Beard
Through
See
Me
" 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
" 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. "
Mary Beard
You
Feel
Without
" 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
" 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
" I think most people gain some sense of how to look at a painting, but no one ever teaches you how to look at a piece of silver. "
Mary Beard
Look
You
Think
" When I am making a TV show, I am looking for engagement, not admiration. "
Mary Beard
Show
Looking
I Am
" 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
" 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
" What interests me is the idea that classics is actually quite democratic. It isn't only the toff, upper-class subject it's often thought to be. Every generation enjoys rediscovering it. "
Mary Beard
Only
Idea
Generation
" 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
" 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! "
Mary Beard
Evening
Girl
Life
" What is the role of an academic - no matter what they're teaching - within political debate? It has to be that they make issues more complicated. The role of the academic is to make everything less simple. "
Mary Beard
Political
Debate
Complicated
" 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. "
Mary Beard
Job
People
Say
" The thing about being a university teacher is that you're fairly tolerant about young people saying things they shouldn't have said. "
Mary Beard
Saying
Young
Teacher
" 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. "
Mary Beard
Power
Women
Time
" No women in ancient Rome ever had the vote. "
Mary Beard
Vote
Rome
Women
" The gloomiest way of describing the ancient world is it is misogyny from A to Z, really. "
Mary Beard
Ancient
Really
Describing