Adrienne Mayor Quotes

I didn't study Greek mythology in school and I wish I had.

Modern scientific knowledge appeared piecemeal. Historians wrote about human history; physicists tackled the material world; and biologists studied the world of living organisms. But there were few links between these disciplines, as researchers focused on getting the details right.

I do not read the ancient languages, but I am beginning to study Greek.

I get letters from college kids who have read Percy Jackson when they were younger who tell me, 'I just passed my Classics exam.' The books are accurate enough that they can serve as a gateway to Homer and Virgil.

I wanted to get the most broad foundation for a lifelong education that I could find, and that was studying Latin and the classics. Meaning Roman and Greek history and philosophy and ancient civilizations.

In the history of science, we often find that the study of some natural phenomenon has been the starting point in the development of a new branch of knowledge.

That period of history has always fascinated me - Greek history, Greek mythology.

Adrienne Mayor's inquiry into the myth--and surprising reality--of Amazon women begins with the fierce Greek huntress Atalanta, but takes us deep into the past and as far afield as the Great Wall of China. With the restless curiosity and meticulous scholarship that have become her hallmark, the author once again has found a gap in my bookshelf and filled it, admirably.

I had always been an enthusiastic reader of stuff about ancient Greece. I would read Herodotus and Thucydides just for fun.

The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong.

The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of nature, and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God idea.

It is by no means certain that we advance our philosophical quest by reading Plato or Aristotle. It may increase our knowledge of history but not of the world.

There is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle

When we say 'science' we can either mean any manipulation of the inventive and organizing power of the human intellect: or we can mean such an extremely different thing as the religion of science, the vulgarized derivative from this pure activity manipulated by a sort of priestcraft into a great religious and political weapon.

Myths are early science, the result of men's first trying to explain what they saw around them.

Now, in the development of our knowledge of the workings of Nature out of the tremendously complex assemblage of phenomena presented to the scientific inquirer, mathematics plays in some respects a very limited, in others a very important part. As regards the limitations, it is merely necessary to refer to the sciences connected with living matter, and to the ologies generally, to see that the facts and their connections are too indistinctly known to render mathematical analysis practicable, to say nothing of the complexity.

The problem that we have is that most Americans don't even study American history, let alone Pinochet, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and all these guys.

that's me. ancient history." [Poseidon to Paul]

I think that there is no supernatural dimension. The natural world is quite wonderful enough. The more we know about it, the much more wonderful it is than any supernatural proposition.

Of all our studies, it is history that is best qualified to reward our research.

If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to speak, the world's inheritance,... these are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it arrived at the condition of men, and arts were gradually invented. Let a thousand surmises shed some light on this story.

In these days of conflict between ancient and modern studies, there must surely be something to be said for a study which did not begin with Pythagoras, and will not end with Einstein, but is the oldest and the youngest of all.

I find science so much more fascinating than science fiction. It also has the advantage of being true.

That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.

Nor is it of much Importance to us to know the Manner in which Nature executes her laws; 'tis enough to know the Laws themselves.