Ancient Quotes - Page 8

• A lot of people they don’t know that Africans even named the stars, that different peoples, different so-called native peoples, have their own names for the stars, and have star charts just as accurate as the Chinese star charts, which are more ancient than the European star charts or even the Arabic ones or the star charts of the New World civilizations. Everybody’s got their own cosmology. Everybody’s got their own description of the universe.

  Gayl Jones

  Stars, Civilization, Names

  Gayl Jones (2016). “The Healing”, p.30, Beacon Press

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• In the old days, land was important as the giver of all things. That period is gone now. Technology and brainpower are all that matters and yet conflicts over land, specially one like on the India-China border, that yields nothing, continue. This is a burden of ancient history that we continue to carry. If tomorrow there is settlement on planet Mars, we will begin to worry if others are interested.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Technology, Yield, Land

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• Ubuntu is not a biblical concept but an ancient African one. Nevertheless it falls back on one simple thing: that humans have been created for togetherness, and what drives us apart is greed, lust for power, and a sense of exclusion, but those are aberrations.

  Allan Boesak

  Philosophy, Fall, Biblical

  Source: reflections.yale.edu

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• We should treat each other better. Why in the hell would you still have racism? This ancient, moronic hatred? Why does our foreign policy have to always involve so much death and so much death of innocent people as a matter of course, to the point to where no one bothers to say anything. I guess a lot of people don't want to move forward. It's frustrating at times.

  Henry Rollins

  Moving, Racism, People

  Source: eluxemagazine.com

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• One of the things that you see ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree on is that strong relationships are a key to happiness, maybe the key to happiness. People who have more strong relationships in their lives just feel happier.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Strong, Keys, People

  Source: bigthink.com

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• We're animals, I think we forget that. I think there is an ancient archetypal memory that still exists within us. If we deny that, what is the cost? So I do think it's what binds us as human beings.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Memories, Animal, Thinking

  Terry Tempest Williams (2006). “A voice in the wilderness: conversations with Terry Tempest Williams”, Utah State Univ Pr

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• Politics I take to be the activity of attending to the general arrangements of a set of people whom chance or choice have brought together. In this sense, families, clubs, and learned societies have their 'politics'. But the communities in which this manner of activities is pre-eminent are the hereditary co-operative groups, many of them of ancient lineage, all of them aware of a past, a present and a future, which we call states.

  Michael Joseph Oakeshott

  Past, People, Community

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• When a rapidly rising power rivals an established ruling power, trouble ensues. In 11 of 15 cases in which this has occurred in the past 500 years, the result was war. The great Greek historian Thucydides identified these structural stresses as the primary cause of the war between Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece. In his oft-quoted insight, "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable."

  Graham T. Allison

  War, Stress, Past

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• Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient Christianism, which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions, above all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public? Miracles after miracles have rolled down in torrents, wave succeeding wave in the Catholic church, from the Council of Nicea, and long before, to this day.

  John Adams

  Christian, Long, Miracle

  Thomas Jefferson, John Adams (2006). “"Ye Will Say I Am No Christian": The Thomas Jefferson/John Adams Correspondence on Religion, Morals, and Values”

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• Evil hiding among us is an ancient theme.

  John Carpenter

  Halloween, Evil, Horror

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• There's a bit of ancient wisdom that appeals to us: it's a saying that a fight starts only with the second blow.

  Hugh Allen

  Wisdom, Revenge, Fighting

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• Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest numbers of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best. All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

  John Adams

  Christian, Men, Numbers

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1969). “The Works of John Adams: Controversial papers of the Revolution (continued) Works on government”

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• I will insist the Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern.

  John Adams

  Atheist, Believe, Fate

  Letter to F. A. Van der Kemp, February 16, 1808.

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