Medieval Quotes - Page 11

• No stigma attaches to the love of money in America, and provided it does not exceed the bounds imposed by public order, it is held in honor. The American will describe as noble and estimable ambition that our medieval ancestors would have called base cupidity.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Ambition, America, Order

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• Bologna is the best city in Italy for food and has the least number of tourists. With its medieval beauty, it has it all.

  Mario Batali

  Travel, Cities, Numbers

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• Every article on these islands has an almost personal character, which gives this simple life, where all art is unknown, something of the artistic beauty of medieval life.

  John Millington Synge

  Beauty, Art, Character

  John Millington Synge (2008). “The Complete Works of J. M. Synge”, p.317, Wordsworth Editions

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• The bassoon is one of my favorite instruments. It has a medieval aroma, like the days when everything used to sound like that. Some people crave baseball...I find this unfathomable, but I can easily understand why a person could get excited about playing the bassoon.

  Frank Zappa

  Baseball, People, Aroma

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.144, Simon and Schuster

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• In the vaults of our hearts and brains, danger waits. All the chambers are not lovely, light and high. There are holes in the floor of the mind, like those in a medieval dungeon floor - the stinking oubliettes, named for forgetting, bottle-shaped cells in solid rock with the trapdoor in the top. Nothing escapes from them quietly to ease us. A quake, some betrayal by our safeguards, and sparks of memory fire the noxious gases - things trapped for years fly free, ready to explode in pain and drive us to dangerous behavior.

  Thomas Harris

  Pain, Memories, Betrayal

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• The idea that it is funny to see wild animals coerced into acting like clumsy humans, or thrilling to see powerful beasts reduced to cringing cowards by a whip-cracking trainer, is primitive and medieval. It stems from the old idea that we are superior to other species and have the right to hold dominion over them.

  Desmond Morris

  Powerful, Animal, Ideas

  "Rose-Tinted Menagerie" by William Johnson, (p. 10), 1990.

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• The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should guard against the encroachment of religion in areas where it has no place, and in particular the control of education by religious authority. The attempts to ban the teaching of evolution or other scientific theories -- a feeble echo of medieval church tyranny and hostility to learning, but an echo nonetheless are serious threats to freedom of inquiry and should be vigorously combated.

  S. T. Joshi

  Religious, Atheist, Teaching

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• In Technologized Desire, the cultural pathologies that mark the panic ecstasy and terminal doom of the posthuman condition are powerfully rehearsed in the language of science fiction. Here, images of prosthetic subjects, zombies, cut-ups and armies of the medieval dead actually slip off the pages of literature to become the terminal hauntology of these technologized times. Technologized Desire is nothing less than a brilliant data screen of future memories. Read it well: it's a survival guide for bodies flatlined by the speed of accelerating technology.

  Arthur Kroker

  Memories, Army, Cutting

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• Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" -- or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel -- "contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Attitude, Reality, Tunnels

  Robert Anton Wilson (1977). “Cosmic trigger: final secret of the illuminati”, New Falcon Pubns

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• The pressure to make public retractions of past statements - there's something medieval about it. What does it mean, anyway, to 'retract' what you've said? How can anyone state categorically that a thought he once had is no longer valid? In modern times an idea can be refuted, yes, but not retracted.

  Milan Kundera

  Mean, Past, Ideas

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• Ah. Medieval-style ransom.” Toot looked confused. “He did run some, but I stopped him, my lord. Like, just now. In front of you. Right over there.” There were several conspicuous sounds behind me, the loudest from my apprentice, and I turned to eye everyone else. They were all either covering smiles or holding them back— poorly. “Hey, peanut gallery,” I said. “This isn’t as easy as I’m making it look.” “You’re doing fine,” Karrin said, her eyes twinkling. I sighed. “Come on, Toot,” I said, and walked over to Hook.

  Jim Butcher

  Running, Confused, Eye

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• The museums of medieval Europe, from Holland to Tuscany, are crammed with instruments and devices upon which the holy men labored devoutly, in order to see how long they could keep someone alive while being roasted. It is not needful to go into further details, but there were also religious books of instruction in this art, and guides for the detection of heresy by pain.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religious, Art, Pain

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.208, Atlantic Books Ltd

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