Ronald Syme Quotes

#1. And so I'm saying that, yes, colonialism was terrible, and I describe it as a legacy of wars, but we ought to be moving away from that by now.

Wangari Maathai

#2. Any of you who have members of your family in the lifestyle, we have a member of our family that is [lesbian]. This is not funny. It's a very sad life. It's part of Satan, I think, to say that this is gay.

Michele Bachmann

#3. Women have their uses for historians.

Ronald Syme

#4. There are some people who don't realize what it is they are doing to others until they are paid back in their own coin. But those are not the worst. The worst are those whose unkindness is calculated.

Elizabeth Goudge

#5. The custom of prefixing or appending to historical narratives an estimate of the character and personality of the principal agent is of doubtful advantage at the best of times - it either imparts a specious unity to the action or permits apology or condemnation on moral and emotional grounds.

Ronald Syme

#6. We have a list of human rights - right to food, right to shelter, right to health, right to education, many such items which are considered and accepted as bill of rights. These are to be insured to people. So all nations, all societies try to do that.

Muhammad Yunus

#7. A democracy cannot rule an empire. Neither can one man, though empire may appear to presuppose monarchy. There is always an oligarchy somewhere, open or concealed.

Ronald Syme

#8. Another tormentor inquired if it was true that I had installed two ping-pong tables in my basement. I asked, was it a crime? No, he said, but why two? "Is that a crime?" I countered, and they all laughed.

Vladimir Nabokov

#9. Individuals capture attention and engross history, but the most revolutionary changes in Roman politics were the work of families or of a few men.

Ronald Syme

#10. Your depth of commitment,
your quality of service,
the product of your devotion
these are the things that count in life.

Scott O'Grady

#11. Pietas prevailed, and out of the blood of Caesar the monarchy was born.

Ronald Syme

#12. The strength and vitality of an empire is frequently due to the new aristocracy from the periphery.

Ronald Syme

#13. Have you tried neuroxing papers? It.'s a very easy and cheap process. You hold the page in front of your eyes and you let it go through there into the brain. It's much better than xeroxing.

Sydney Brenner

#14. I love my parents, and I want my mother to be president.

Chelsea Clinton

#15. In matters of literary and historical appraisement, one cannot operate with the methods of a laboratory or furnish the proof to be demanded in a court of law. The best is only the probable. Any who raise complaint have an easy remedy: to offer something better, something coherent and constructive.

Ronald Syme

#16. Crassus was in the habit of maintaining that nobody should be called rich who was not able to maintain an army on his income.

Ronald Syme