Tom Holland Quotes

#1. Enthusiasts for empire argued that Rome had a civilizing mission; that because her values and institutions were self-evidently superior to those of barbarians, she had a duty to propagate them; that only once the whole globe had been subjected to her rule could there be a universal peace.

Tom Holland

#2. In the Arab world, at any rate, to doubt the traditional account of Islam's origins has been to risk death threats, prosecution for apostasy, or even defenestration.61

Tom Holland

#3. More people worship the rising than the setting sun,

Tom Holland

#4. Set strictures on a person all you like, but the mind remains adulterous.

Tom Holland

#5. You cannot regulate desire.

Tom Holland

#6. The people the Quran describes have a deep and sophisticated knowledge of the Biblical Tradition.

Tom Holland

#7. When Nero, with a casual quip, declared 'mushrooms to be the food of the gods, since it was by means of a mushroom that Claudius has become a god',66 it

Tom Holland

#8. Of all Rome's seven hills, however, the Palatine was the most exclusive by far.

Tom Holland

#9. Just like any electorate, they delighted in making candidates for their favors sweat.

Tom Holland

#10. When I was young, my mom realized I could dance and hold a beat, and I really danced just for fun. It was good exercise.

Tom Holland

#11. Always been, and the safety of the Republic would be assured. This was a presumption buried deep in the soul of every Roman.

Tom Holland

#12. Achievement was worthy of praise and honor, but excessive achievement was pernicious and a threat to the state.

Tom Holland

#13. On stage you need to emphasize every emotion. But on screen you need to tone everything down and make it believable.

Tom Holland

#14. That there existed no earthly empire so great or overweening that it might not one day be dashed to pieces

Tom Holland

#15. Men are all such fashion-victims these days that, really, we can hardly blame women for feeling the pressure.

Tom Holland

#16. Sasanian monarchy and the fabled Kayanid

Tom Holland

#17. Prohibitions, trust me, only encourage bad behaviour.

Tom Holland

#18. Rome, over the years, had measurably benefited from the influx of foreign talent.

Tom Holland

#19. Even when they have been felled, let alone when they are still standing and fighting, they never disgrace themselves,

Tom Holland

#20. Kavad himself, if obliged to fight on a Jewish holy day, had been known to request his adversaries for a temporary truce.

Tom Holland

#21. Spirits flung down from heaven at the beginning of time still stalked the earth, hunting human prey;

Tom Holland

#22. I have a photographic memory.

Tom Holland

#23. When you encounter the unbelievers, blows to necks it shall be until, once you have routed them, you are to tighten their fetters.

Tom Holland

#24. [T]here [is] no limit to what might not be achieved by an alliance between an imperial monarchy and revelations, if truly believed to be heaven-sent, of a prophet.

Tom Holland

#25. I completely and utterly rely on my mum. Without my mum, I would not be anywhere at all. I'd literally just be a couch potato.

Tom Holland

#26. Here, amid the murk of such contradictory opinions, was ample opportunity for Augustus to consolidate his position yet further. Who better qualified than the Restorer of the Republic, after all, to realise the full potential of hypocrisy?

Tom Holland

#27. I thought, gazing at the beauty of the landscape again, it is as though the fiend has prevailed against the angels, and fixed his throne in a heaven, to rule it as though it were Hell.

Tom Holland

#28. Winners are the favourites of heaven.

Tom Holland

#29. [T]he greater the sense of awe with which a text was regarded, the more complete might be the amnesia as to the original circumstances of its composition.

Tom Holland

#30. While he may forget that he is Caesar, I never forget that I am Caesar's daughter.

Tom Holland

#31. The most important thing, in anything you do, is always trying your hardest, because even if you try your hardest and it's not as good as you'd hoped, you still have that sense of not letting yourself down.

Tom Holland

#32. We always want what we're not allowed.

Tom Holland

#33. This [for opposition leaders to claim royal lineage], in a world ruled by a republic, was what revolution had come to mean.

Tom Holland

#34. The fish fanciers, sitting by their ponds and gazing into their depths, were tracing shadows darker than they understood.

Tom Holland

#35. Stories of the Virgin being succoured by a friendly palm tree had actually been a Christian tradition for centuries, and seem in turn to have derived from a legend told by the pagan Greeks, was blithely ignored - as, of course, it was bound to be.

Tom Holland

#36. As one Saudi professor sternly tells his co-religionists, Only the writings of a practising Muslim are worthy of our attention.

Tom Holland

#37. I'm literally tone-deaf with singing. It's unreal.

Tom Holland

#38. JULIA: Oldest daughter of Julia and Agrippa. Owner of the smallest dwarf in Rome. Exiled in AD 8.

Tom Holland

#39. Once the world of ideas has been transformed, reality cannot hold out for long. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Tom Holland

#40. Gain cannot be made without loss to someone else.

Tom Holland

#41. I don't mind sitting at home playing the guitar for a year as long as I'm making good films.

Tom Holland

#42. I think, from every actor I've ever spoken to, they say the biggest thing they regret from life is not finishing school.

Tom Holland

#43. Adrenaline has always been my thing.

Tom Holland

#44. When I'm acting, it's like I am the character - no one can talk to me. But I'm not so method I'd sell my house and live on the street to play a tramp.

Tom Holland

#45. The Roman character had a strong streak of snobbery: effectively, citizens preferred to vote for families with strong brand recognition, electing son after father after grandfather to the great magistracies of state, indulging the nobility's dynastic pretensions with a numbing regularity.

Tom Holland