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" My mother took me to the British Museum aged five. I had thought people from the past weren't as good as we were, and then I saw the Elgin marbles. Suddenly, the world seemed more complicated. "

Mary Beard

Good

Mother

Past

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

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

" 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. "

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" 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. "

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

Mary Beard

Through

See

" I've chosen to be this way because that's how I feel comfortable with myself. That's how I am. It's about joining up the dots between how you look and how you feel inside, and I think that's what I've done, and I think people do it differently. "

" 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. "

" The history of art is not just the history of artists; it is also the history of the people who viewed art. And that wider perspective can help us see some of the reasons why the art of the ancient world should still matter to us. "

" There is no way, absolutely no way, that I would want people to stop reading the 'Odyssey.' But I want them to read it with their eyes open. To notice it and then to think what it says about us. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" You always regret upsetting people needlessly. "

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

" You can't always worry about offending people. "

" 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

Woman

" When I am making a TV show, I am looking for engagement, not admiration. "