Ancient History Quotes

Less than 1 percent of ancient Egypt has been discovered and excavated. With population pressures, urbanization, and modernization encroaching, we're in a race against time. Why not use the most advanced tools we have to map, quantify, and protect our past?

What can we be certain of from history? That human beings have been wrong innumerable times, by vast amounts, and with catastrophic results. Yet today there are still people who think that anyone who disagrees with them must be either bad or not know what he is talking about…Students can graduate from even the most prestigious colleges and universities wholly unaware that there are not simply different opinions about particular issues but a whole comprehensive framework of ideas and analysis through which those issues can be seen in a way that leads to very different conclusions from the ones their professors have taught or insinuated…It is a shame that ancient history is seldom taught in our schools. Finding out that people thousands of years ago were basically pretty much the way they are today — people of every race, color, creed, national origin, political ideology and sexual orientation—would reduce our chances of having Utopian hopes for big changes any time soon.

Any period is fascinating: the more ancient, the better.

I found Rome built of bricks; I leave her clothed in marble.

We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer ago than six thousand years the world did not exist

Mostly, in The Great Waldo Pepper I remember the lovely Ed Herrmann befriending me and taking care of me. I was crying a lot. I was a real mess when we made that. But this is all such ancient history, Jesus Lord. Was this before or after The Sting?

Greece appears to be the fountain of knowledge; Rome of elegance

I've come to the conclusion that mythology is really a form of archaeological psychology. Mythology gives you a sense of what a people believes, what they fear.

There is no nation in the world greater, older or more honorable than the Turkish nation, nor has one been seen in the history of humanity.

Iraq is a country I came to know well and the place where I spent some of the most consequential years of my life.

One whom the infernal gods of Hannibal will cause to be reborn, terror of mankind; never more horror nor worse days in the past than will come to the Romans through Babel.

The Persian King Darius I ordered the crucifixion of 3,000 Babylonians in about 519 BC.

South Africa had a long record of studies in prehistory, going back to the end of the last century.

Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars.

I was astounded to learn that Alaskan caves might be hiding secrets about the earliest people ever to enter the Americas. That's when I began to picture a story that would start with kayaking and lead into the caves.

I love the Middle East and have been lucky enough to visit a few of the countries like Egypt, Lebanon, Jordon and the U.A.E.

The man who first gave history a recognized place in science was an ancient historian.

The new history is really ancient history newly discovered. Journalists are taking crash courses in the blood-drenched background of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, North Ossetians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

Rome has grown since its humble beginnings that it is now overwhelmed by its own greatness.

Helen of Troy, a hooker from Upstate New York. Never got a dinner!

Once you touch the trappings of monarchy, like opening an Egyptian tomb, the inside is liable to crumble

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

In the tenth century the old Batavian and later Roman forms have faded away.

The thing I love about Rome is that is has so many layers. In it, you can follow anything that interests you: town planning, architecture, churches or culture. It's a city rich in antiquity and early Christian treasures, and just endlessly fascinating. There's nowhere else like it.

Israel is a wonderful country, especially Tel Aviv.