Quotes by Mary Beard - Page 2

If women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather than women?
Mary Beard / Professor
Women
Within
Women Are
Fully
Perceived
Rather
Redefine
Structures
Surely
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In general, I never think it is a good idea to try to recreate past successes. You have to strike out on your own, for better or worse.
Mary Beard / Professor
Good Idea
Recreate
Strike
Successes
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There's a basic rule of thumb that the more a culture oppresses women, or oppresses anyone, the more culturally preoccupied they are with that.
Mary Beard / Professor
Basic
Preoccupied
Rule
Thumb
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I loved 'Gladiator,' and I thought its depiction of gladiatorial combat, although it was an aggrandizing picture, was cleverly and expertly done.
Mary Beard / Professor
Combat
Depiction
Gladiator
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Classics isn't about the ancient world. It's partly about the ancient world, but it's about our conversation. It's how we try to talk to antiquity.
Mary Beard / Professor
Ancient
Antiquity
Classics
Partly
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Whatever you say about popular culture, people like people who know things, who are experts, and it doesn't particularly matter what they look like.
Mary Beard / Professor
Experts
Popular Culture
Culture Look People
Look Culture People
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English country towns are often seen as a cultural wasteland, but the more cut off you are, the more the need to create things, to make your own culture.
Mary Beard / Professor
Towns
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The reason why the British theatrical tradition is world-leading in Greek drama is because there is a flourishing tradition of people rethinking Greek tragedy.
Mary Beard / Professor
British
Drama
Flourishing
Theatrical
Tragedy
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For whatever reason, some sorts of women's silence were broken by MeToo. This is the optimistic bit. And that will lead to a much more careful attention to women's voices.
Mary Beard / Professor
Careful
Silence
Voices
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Greek myths, early Roman history, is configured around violence against women. And I think we need to get in there, get our hands dirty, face it, and see why and how it was.
Mary Beard / Professor
History
Hands
Violence
Against
Face
Early
Myths
Roman
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We are sold the idea of a refugee as a tiny child sitting crying, as a way of raising money, but elderly ladies and kids largely can't move. The demographic is mostly young men.
Mary Beard / Professor
Elderly
Refugee
Sitting
Tiny
Crying
Demographic
Ladies
Mostly
Raising
Sold
Young Men
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Nobody but an idiot would pretend that they had an error-proof way of choosing the 'best' out of hundreds of perfectly qualified applicants - not for university or for anything.
Mary Beard / Professor
Qualified
Choosing
Pretend
Hundreds
Perfectly
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At 16, I got into local-education archaeology classes - you got to go to summer digs. It allowed me to be both intellectual and a bad girl with a wicked social life every evening!
Mary Beard / Professor
Archaeology
Bad Girl
Evening
Social Life
Summer
Wicked
Life Me Bad
Allowed
Classes
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What interests me is the idea that classics is actually quite democratic. It isn't only the toff, upper-class subject it's often thought to be. Every generation enjoys rediscovering it.
Mary Beard / Professor
Upper Class
Classics
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It would have been nice if the people who were criticising 'Civilizations' had actually watched it. But the popular response has been tremendous, and in the end, that's what really matters.
Mary Beard / Professor
Response
Civilizations
Tremendous
In The End
People End In The End
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If talking about arts means being pretentious, a bit like being a wine critic, then I don't feel comfy with that. You can get a lot from paintings without getting mystical about brush strokes.
Mary Beard / Professor
Mystical
Pretentious
Strokes
Wine
Brush
Critic
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My mother took me to the British Museum aged five. I had thought people from the past weren't as good as we were, and then I saw the Elgin marbles. Suddenly, the world seemed more complicated.
Mary Beard / Professor
British Museum
Good World Me
Aged
Marbles
Museum
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In real life, Oxford and Cambridge are two excellent universities, like many others in the country. They are full of highly intelligent, hard-working, and quite ordinary students and teachers.
Mary Beard / Professor
Cambridge
Intelligent
Ordinary
Oxford
Real Life
Hard-Working
Universities
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If you say to a group of women professors, 'Close your eyes and think of a professor,' what they will see is a guy. I will. And I'll stop myself and think, 'Hey, hang on, what am I doing here?'
Mary Beard / Professor
Hey
Professor
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There is no way, absolutely no way, that I would want people to stop reading the 'Odyssey.' But I want them to read it with their eyes open. To notice it and then to think what it says about us.
Mary Beard / Professor
Odyssey
Eyes People Way
Notice
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I receive something we might euphemistically call an 'inappropriately hostile' response - that is to say, more than fair criticism or even fair anger - every time I speak on radio or television.
Mary Beard / Professor
Anger
Criticism
Hostile
Response
Receive
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When you look at me on the telly and say, 'She should be on 'The Undateables,'' you are looking at a 59-year-old woman. That is what 59-year-old women who have not had work done look like. Get it?
Mary Beard / Professor
Work Women Look
Telly
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What is the role of an academic - no matter what they're teaching - within political debate? It has to be that they make issues more complicated. The role of the academic is to make everything less simple.
Mary Beard / Professor
Academic
Complicated
Debate
Political Debate
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I was into Black Power, and my practice Oxbridge essay was a rant. The headmistress said I'd never get in with that, but she was probably wrong. I was the ideal combination: a swot who was also a bad girl.
Mary Beard / Professor
Bad Girl
Combination
Rant
Essay
Ideal
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All religions throughout history have been concerned about - and have sometimes fought over - what it means to represent God, and they have found elegant, intriguing, and awkward ways to confront that dilemma.
Mary Beard / Professor
Awkward
Dilemma
Elegant
Intriguing
All Religions
Confront
Represent
Religions
Fought
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It doesn’t much matter what line of argument you take as a woman. If you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It’s not what you say that prompts it - it’s the fact that you are saying it.
Mary Beard / Professor
Abuse
Lines
Males
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I do not think that the lives of women of my generation, as a class, were blighted by the way the power differentials between men and women operated. We wanted to change those power differentials; we also had a good time.
Mary Beard / Professor
Men And Women
My Generation
Change Time Good
Operated
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History is how we have learnt to think about ourselves. It's not as though the Greeks and Romans are static entities out there to be discovered and translated. We make them speak, we talk to them, and they inform what we say.
Mary Beard / Professor
Static
Discovered
Entities
Greeks
Inform
Learnt
Romans
Translated
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There's a difference between what I would like to have been and what I would have been. I always fantasized about being a reforming judge or prison governor (I think that the UK penal system is a disgrace) - but it's fantasy.
Mary Beard / Professor
Differences
Judging
Thinking
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One of its most powerful weapons has always been 'barbarity': 'we' know that 'we' are civilised by contrasting ourselves with those we deem to be un-civilised, with those who do not - or cannot be trusted to - share our values.
Mary Beard / Professor
Civilised
Most Powerful
Trusted
Weapons
Contrasting
Deem
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The history of art is not just the history of artists; it is also the history of the people who viewed art. And that wider perspective can help us see some of the reasons why the art of the ancient world should still matter to us.
Mary Beard / Professor
Ancient
Perspective
Art History World
Artists
Help
Reasons
Viewed
Wider
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One of the great things about history is that it sort of isn't a done deal - ever. The historical texts and the historical evidence that you use is always somehow giving you different answers because you're asking it different questions.
Mary Beard / Professor
Answers
Evidence
Great Things
Historical
History Great Always
History Great Done
Questions
Somehow
Texts
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What politicians do is they never get the rhetoric wrong, and the price they pay is they don't speak the truth as they see it. Now, I will speak truth as I see it, and sometimes I don't get the rhetoric right. I think that's a fair trade-off.
Mary Beard / Professor
Rhetoric
Trade-Off
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I've chosen to be this way because that's how I feel comfortable with myself. That's how I am. It's about joining up the dots between how you look and how you feel inside, and I think that's what I've done, and I think people do it differently.
Mary Beard / Professor
Chosen
Comfortable
Dots
Joining
Inside
Myself Done Look
Myself Look I Am
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Thinking through how you look to your enemies is helpful. That doesn't mean that your ideology is wrong and theirs is right, but maybe you have to recognise that they have one - and that it may be logically coherent. Which may be uncomfortable.
Mary Beard / Professor
Ideology
Recognise
Uncomfortable
Coherent
Enemies
Logically
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What I find very interesting is, we're not enthralled by the ancient world, and we've escaped all kinds of ancient preconceptions and assumptions and prejudices. But, nevertheless, we still make that connection between authoritative speech and male speech.
Mary Beard / Professor
Ancient
Nevertheless
Preconceptions
Assumptions
Authoritative
Escaped
Prejudices
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We lived in the schoolhouse of the village school in Church Preen, in deepest Shropshire, and my mum was the schoolmistress. She taught the juniors, and one other teacher taught the infants. I went there from the age of three, no doubt as a form of childcare.
Mary Beard / Professor
Childcare
Juniors
No Doubt
Village
Deepest
Infants
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I was 11 when I started Latin - not like boys, who start early at prep school. At 14, you had to choose whether to start Greek and drop German, but my mum made a fuss, and I took Latin, Greek, French, and German at O-level, which meant I didn't do much science.
Mary Beard / Professor
Latin
Mum
German
Meant
Choose
French
Drop
Fuss
Prep
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In 1984, I returned to Newnham College at Cambridge University to teach after completing my Ph.D. there a couple of years earlier. Almost all of my colleagues in the university's classics department were men, and my office at the all-women's college was in the dorm.
Mary Beard / Professor
Cambridge
Colleagues
Completing
Couple
Department
Office
Teach
University
Almost All
Classics
Dorm
Earlier
Returned
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I used to think that the British press were particularly awful to Cherie Blair. I think Blair's foreign policy was a complete disaster, but the British press, when they wanted to explain why Blair took unexpected moves, they did create Cherie as the power behind the throne.
Mary Beard / Professor
Blair
British
Disaster
Foreign Policy
Policy
Unexpected
Behind
British Press
Complete
Create
Explain
Particularly
Press
Throne
Took
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One of the downsides of working in antiquity is that you don't have many female voices, but you certainly have a lot of male terror about the potential of women's power. It shows you very clearly that the most oppressive cultures tend to be afraid of those whom they oppress.
Mary Beard / Professor
Antiquity
Terror
Cultures
Oppress
Voices
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I'm not in the slightest wanting to attack the women's movement here. But I think that in popular, broadly left-wing, broadly feminist discourse, there is a tendency to just label discrimination against women - and embedded assumptions about them - as misogyny and think 'job done.'
Mary Beard / Professor
Discourse
Embedded
Left Wing
Assumptions
Attack
Label
Slightest
Tendency
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A lot of people will always say, 'I really know nothing about the ancient world.' But there's lots and lots of things people know. Partly, they've been encouraged to think they're ignorant about it. In some ways, the job to do is show people that they know much more than they'd like to admit.
Mary Beard / Professor
Ancient
Ignorant
Always World People
Admit
World People Nothing
Encouraged
Lots And Lots
Partly
Show People
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I'm exploring the long history of women, first of all, being silenced and, secondly, not being taken seriously in the political and public sphere. It's a call to action through understanding and through looking at ourselves again and trying to reformulate the whole question of women and power.
Mary Beard / Professor
Exploring
History Women Power
First Of All
Long History
Secondly
Silenced
Sphere
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I think that what will help women get into positions of power - well, day nurseries, equal pay, family-friendly working hours. And I think all that's important. I used to think it was the solution. I now think it's enabling, and it's important, but still we have got head work to do about this.
Mary Beard / Professor
Enabling
Equal Pay
Work Women Power
Family-Friendly
Positions
Solution
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We make two mistakes about the ancient world. One is to assume they were better than us - that, for instance, the ancient Olympics didn't involve money-making. The opposite mistake, and just as common, is to think our Olympics are much more civilised than ancient sporting competitions. Neither is true.
Mary Beard / Professor
Ancient
Civilised
Instance
Olympics
Assume
Competitions
Involve
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I don't think that we are completely dominated by what we have inherited from the past, but it is the case that as far back as you can go - just to Homer, but also to the literature of Rome, the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance - what you will find is that women's voices are not taken seriously.
Mary Beard / Professor
Middle Ages
Renaissance
Rome
Ages
Dominated
Homer
Inherited
Voices
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I think you have to realize that most ancient warfare is really kind of hit and run, honestly. You go and you bash down the walls of some enemy 50 miles away and you take some slaves, you take some cattle, probably a bit of cash too, and then you say goodbye and go home and you probably do the same thing next year - or try to, or they do it to you.
Mary Beard / Professor
Home
Ancient
Bash
Cash
Cattle
Enemy
Goodbye
Honestly
Miles
Next
Next Year
Warfare
Try
Away
Bit
Hit
Same
Run
Down
Go Home
Realize
Same Thing
Slaves
Walls
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Mary Beard Quotes - Page 2

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