Melina Mercouri Quotes

The Elgin Marbles were supposed to be on the Parthenon. For many works of art, a museum is an artificial setting - a zoo, not a natural habitat.

I'm a proud Greek. I carry my Hellenism like a badge of merit.

I lived in Greece for about four years of my life, and living there had a huge impact on my life growing up. My father was very much adamant that we would learn about our culture. It's a very rich culture to be a part of since it has such a great history behind it. I definitely carry that in my job, and I am very passionate.

The Thames could be thought of as England's longest archaeological site, and no fewer than 90,000 objects recovered from its foreshore are in the collection of the Museum of London, whose 30-year relationship with London mudlarks is both committed and highly regulated.

I have a long view of history - my orientation is archaeological because I'm always thinking in terms of ancient Greece and Rome, ancient Persia and Egypt.

Much has been said and continues to be said of what little concern the Turks had for the Acropolis treasures.

You must understand what the Parthenon Marbles mean to us. They are our pride. They are our sacrifices. They are our noblest symbol of excellence. They are a tribute to the democratic philosophy. They are our aspirations and our name. They are the essence of Greekness.

[On the British Museum:] It was manifestly impossible to read all the books in that huge, gloomy structure, but I made a good try and accumulated a fund of useless information guaranteed to cast a pall over any dinner table.

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence.

For all the casual slurs about 'cultural imperialism', British imperialists were more interested in other cultures than anybody before or since, and, if they hadn't dug it up and taken care of it, we'd know hardly anything about the ancient world. What's important about a nation's past is not what it keeps walled up in the museum but what it keeps outside, living and breathing as every citizen's inheritance.

The Italians have had 2,000 years to fix up the Forum and just look at the place!

Many of our ideas of democracy, so much of our literature and philosophy and science can be traced back to roots right here in Athens.

I think we are incumbent, I am incumbent, the Who is incumbent, anybody that produces anything by me is incumbent by my Englishness.

Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.

What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period.

In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.

Since graveyards are often built over older burial grounds, I assume Dolores Park was probably an Indian, (an Ohlone) graveyard before that. I think the fact that it has so many layers underneath the contemporary one intrigues me.

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As the best gem upon her zone.

And so, inevitably, one returns to the centre of Western culture, Greece, and we have never, in any sense, lost our ties with the architectural concepts that this country's ancient civilization explored and demonstrated, nor with the political and social freedom that lay behind them.

The Western memory museum is now mostly a visual one.

With the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning.

Archaeology is not only the hand maid of history, it is also the conservator of art.

I do love these ancient ruins. We never tread upon them but we set Our foot upon some reverend history.

SAD, BUT ONE DAY OUR KIDS WILL HAVE TO VISIT MUSEUMS TO SEE WHAT A LADY LOOKS LIKE.