Medieval Quotes

• The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval.

  Peter Singer

  Philosophy, Sacred, Life Is

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• We can appreciate but not really understand the medieval town. We cannot comprehend its compactness, the contiguity of all its buildings as a single uninterrupted whole.

  Arthur Erickson

  Appreciate, Towns, Building

  Arthur Erickson's Address to the Institute of Canadian Bankers, www.arthurerickson.com. October 16, 1972.

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• Our horizon is the creation of a noble society to which, like the medieval builder of those glorious cathedrals, you will have added your conception, your artful piece of stone.

  Adrienne Clarkson

  Horizon, Noble, Pieces

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• In medieval times the habit arose of expressing a man's wealth, no longer in terms of the amount of land in his estate, but of the amount of pepper in his pantry. One way of saying that a man was poor was to say that he lacked pepper. The wealthy lacked pepper. The wealthy kept large stores of pepper in their houses, and let it be known that it was there: it was a guarantee of solvency.

  Waverley Root

  Food, Men, Land

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• Paul Ryan, who teamed up with Akin in the House to sponsor harsh anti-abortion bills, may look young and hip and new generation, with his iPod full of heavy metal jams and his cute kids. But he's just a fresh face on a Taliban creed - the evermore antediluvian, anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-gay conservative core. Amiable in khakis and polo shirts, Ryan is the perfect modern leader to rally medieval Republicans who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted with dinosaurs.

  Maureen Dowd

  Cute, Believe, Kids

  "Just think No" by Maureen Dowd, www.nytimes.com. August 21, 2012.

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• The medieval Church believed that the resurrection of Christ marked a new time for all of humanity.

  Timothy Radcliffe

  Humanity, Church, Resurrection

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• Our culture will become like it was during the medieval times when there truly was a cultural elite. The rest of the people will just watch television, which will be their only frame of reference.

  Jackie Kennedy

  People, Watches, Culture

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• A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.

  Vince Lombardi

  Football, Motivational Sports, School

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• Opinion is the companion of probability within the medieval epistemology.

  Ian Hacking

  Opinion, Companion, Epistemology

  Ian Hacking (2006). “The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference”, p.55, Cambridge University Press

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• I love medieval cities; they do not clamor for attention; they possess their souls - their riches - in quiet; formal, courteous, they reveal themselves slowly, stone by stone, garden by garden; hidden treasures wait calmly to be loved and yield to introspective wandering.

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

  Travel, Garden, Cities

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• The rosary was said every evening. I always liked that sentence about the medieval Churches, that they were the Bibles of the poor. The Church was my first book and I would think it is still my most important book.

  John McGahern

  Book, Thinking, Church

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• The medieval university looked backwards; it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge. The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge.

  Thomas Huxley

  Knowledge, College, Looks

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• Krakow is one of my favorite places on earth. It is a medieval city full of young people. A wonderful, striking combination.

  Jonathan Carroll

  Cities, People, Favorite Places

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• Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.

  E. O. Wilson

  Stars, Confused, Real

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• We exist in a bizarre combination of Stone Age emotions, medieval beliefs, and god-like technology.

  E. O. Wilson

  Technology, Age, Stones

  "The Great Matrix of Being" by William Grassie, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 26, 2013.

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• Ancient metaphysics underwent many changes at the hands of medieval thinkers who brought it in line with the dominant religious and theological movements of their day.

  Wilhelm Dilthey

  Religious, Hands, Movement

  Wilhelm Dilthey, Rudolf A. Makkreel, Frithjof Rodi (1991). “Introduction to the Human Sciences”, p.59, Princeton University Press

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• Leonardo da Vinci did not take received wisdom - whether from ancient classical thinkers or medieval scholars or from the Bible - without questioning it. And this was the beginning of the scientific method. This is another lesson for our time: that when we have evidence that contradicts a certain belief, we should be willing to change it. I think this made Leonardo, in some ways, a person who better understood the beauty of God's creation than a person who just takes all received wisdom from the Bible on faith.

  Walter Isaacson

  Thinking, Belief, Ancient

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Every man should arm himself as quickly as he could, and come to the King.

  Charles William Chadwick Oman

  Kings, War, Men

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• I was in the black silence of a medieval street, and blindly I followed its sharp turns, comforted by the height of its narrow tenements, which seemed at any moment capable of falling together, closing this alleyway under indifferent stars like a seam.

  Anne Rice

  Stars, Fall, Silence

  Anne Rice (2011). “The Vampire Chronicles Collection: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned”, p.253, Ballantine Books

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• That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains.

  Susan Vreeland

  Heart, Humble, Hands

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• To the medieval mind the possibility of doubt did not exist.

  William Manchester

  Doubt, Mind, Possibility

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• In most cases, obviously, soldiers fought because a government drafted them and gave them a rifle. At every point too, we see the role of nationalistic sentiment, commercial rivalries, and simple greed. But can we ever separate out such motives from the religious? Was that not also true of the medieval crusades?

  Philip Jenkins

  Religious, Simple, Government

  Interview with Scott McKnight, www.patheos.com. January 23, 2016.

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• Satire must always accompany any free society. It is an absolute necessity. Even in the most repressive medieval kingdoms, they understood the need for the court jester, the one soul allowed to tell the truth through laughter.

  Joe Randazzo

  Laughter, Soul, Needs

  "Former 'Onion' editor: Freedom of speech cannot be killed" by Joe Randazzo, www.msnbc.com. January 7, 2015.

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• To the medieval mind a liberty was a right to the enjoyment of a specific property It was a freedom to do something with one's own without interference by the king or any other man.

  Arthur Bryant

  Kings, Men, Mind

  Arthur Bryant (1985). “Set in a silver sea: the island peoples from earliest times to the fifteenth century”

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• There was a time in medieval England when they had wandering minstrels ... A wandering minstrel would have been Frank Sinatra's counterpart had he lived during the time of Henry II in 1190 or 1180.

  Frank Sinatra, Jr.

  England, Minstrels, Wander

  Source: www.news-journalonline.com

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