16 Quotes About Antiquity

The world is filled with things that we’ve forgotten and new discoveries that we ignore, so it’s difficult to know what to believe and what not. Looking back at history makes it easier to understand how we got to where we are today, and it’s almost always through mistakes and errors. Taking a look at how things used to be can show us that our present circumstances aren’t as bleak as they seem. These quotes from the past relate to the present in some way, whether they’re about the same topics or they address a different issue altogether.

Astrology is assured of recognition from psychology, without further restrictions,...
1
Astrology is assured of recognition from psychology, without further restrictions, because astrology represents the summation of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity. C.g. Jung
2
Educated and ambitious, with their own forthright opinions, the women of the Garvey set did more to determine political direction than many councillors. Their involvement in public life and political machinations was such that the Shylonian ambassador was able to report, to his monarch, that the women of the Garvey clique were ‘politicians first, homemakers second. A.H. Septimius
3
I came to the Greeks early, and I found answers in them. Greece's great men let all their acts turn on the immortality of the soul. We don't really act as if we believed in the soul's immortality and that's why we are where we are today. Edith Hamilton
4
Those who like to interpret historical facts symbolically may recognize in this the spirit of a specifically "modern" conception of the world which permits the subject to assert itself against the object as something independent and equal; whereas classical antiquity did not as yet permit the explicit formulation of this contrast; and whereas the Middle Ages believed the subject as well as the object to be submerged in a higher unity. Erwin Panofsky
5
In time, all great masterpieces turn into shameless creatures who laugh at their creators. Erol Ozan
6
You have not studied the histories of ancient times, and perhaps know not the life that breathes in them; a soul of beauty and wisdom which had penetrated my heart of hearts. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
7
A very long time ago, some 2.5 million years B.C., the mother of human species as we know it, our ultimate ancestor, appeared in East Africa... She was four feet tall and probably black.. Norman F. Cantor
8
...we can endure neither our vices nor the remedies needed to cure them. Livy
9
Words borrowed of antiquity do lend a kind of majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes. Ben Jonson
10
Not only in antiquity but in our own times also laws have been passed..to secure good conditions for workers; so it is right that the art of medicine should contribute its portion for the benefit and relief of those for whom the law has shown such foresight..[ We] ought to show peculiar zeal..in taking precautions for their safety. I for one have done all that lay in my power, and have not thought it beneath me to step into workshops of the meaner sort now and again and study the obscure operations of mechanical arts. Bernardino Ramazzini
11
According to the conclusion of Dr. Hutton, and of many other geologists, our continents are of definite antiquity, they have been peopled we know not how, and mankind are wholly unacquainted with their origin. Unknown
12
Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control. George Eliot
13
What is democracy? It is what it says, the rule of the people. It is as good as the people are, or as bad. Mary Renault
14
Looking at him she felt she knew what the people of antiquity had been like. Thirty centuries or more were effaced, and there he was, the alert and predatory sub-human, further from what she believed man should be like than the naked savage, because the savage was tractable, while this creature, wearing the armor of his own rigid barbaric culture, consciously defied progress. And that was what Stenham saw, too; to him the boy was a perfect symbol of human backwardness, and excited his praise precisely because he was “pure”: there was no room in his personality for anything that mankind had not already fully developed long ago. To him he was a consolation, a living proof that today’s triumph was not yet total; he personified Stenham’s infantile hope that time might still be halted and man sent back to his origins. . Paul Bowles
15
Surely, the gods' judgment is certain. But as for us, we must be satisfied to 'come close' to those things, for we are men, who speak according to what is likely, and whose lectures resemble fables. Proclus