Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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

" 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. "

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

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

" When it comes to silencing women, Western culture has had thousands of years of practice. "

" What politicians do is they never get the rhetoric wrong, and the price they pay is they don't speak the truth as they see it. Now, I will speak truth as I see it, and sometimes I don't get the rhetoric right. I think that's a fair trade-off. "

" The web is democratising and also the voice of people who don't think they have another outlet. And that voice can be punitive. "

" Playing around with other people's husbands when you were 17 was bad news. Yes, I was a very naughty girl. "

" I used to think that the British press were particularly awful to Cherie Blair. I think Blair's foreign policy was a complete disaster, but the British press, when they wanted to explain why Blair took unexpected moves, they did create Cherie as the power behind the throne. "

" People who exploit others come to spend an enormous amount of energy wondering about and justifying that exploitation. "

" 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. "

" You have to do what you feel comfortable with. "

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

Mary Beard

Through

See

" 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. "

" 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! "

" 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. "

" There's a basic rule of thumb that the more a culture oppresses women, or oppresses anyone, the more culturally preoccupied they are with that. "

Mary Beard

Women

Thumb

" It wasn't until I got to Cambridge that I discovered active discrimination against women. "

" I would summarise my politics very simply as the maverick left and proud. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" It's great fun being an academic because you have a certain licence to be a bit of a joker. "

" 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. "

" You always regret upsetting people needlessly. "

" 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. "

" I think you have to realize that most ancient warfare is really kind of hit and run, honestly. You go and you bash down the walls of some enemy 50 miles away and you take some slaves, you take some cattle, probably a bit of cash too, and then you say goodbye and go home and you probably do the same thing next year - or try to, or they do it to you. "

" I think, when I was 25, nobody in the world knew who I was. "

" I'm not in the slightest wanting to attack the women's movement here. But I think that in popular, broadly left-wing, broadly feminist discourse, there is a tendency to just label discrimination against women - and embedded assumptions about them - as misogyny and think 'job done.' "

" There's plenty of firm evidence for ethnic diversity in Roman Britain. "

" You can hardly be a classicist and not be interested in theatre. "