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 BeardRead
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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of engaging critically with classic literature.
Mary Beard highlights the significance of not just reading the 'Odyssey' but doing so with an analytical mindset. She encourages readers to reflect on the text and its implications for understanding human nature and society, underscoring that literature offers valuable insights into our collective identity and values.
In practice
In a classroom discussion about the relevance of classical literature.
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.
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.
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.
I'd quite like to be in Caligula's court - living in the back room somewhere and just being able to observe.
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.
It wasn't until I got to Cambridge that I discovered active discrimination against women.
When individual members and families immerse themselves in the scriptures regularly and consistently, … other areas of activity will automatically come. Testimonies will increase. Commitment will be strengthened. Families will be fortified. Personal revelation will flow
It's never enough to just tell people about some new insight. Rather, you have to get them to experience it a way that evokes its power and possibility. Instead of pouring knowledge into people's heads, you need to help them grind anew set of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a new way.
The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of the body. The child's primary business is learning. It is also the primary entertainment. To retain that orientation into adulthood, so that consciousness is not a burden but a joy, is the mark of the successfully developed human being.
For 300 years, higher education was not disruptable because there was no technological core.
The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.
This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that reflection will come their necessary engagement in the struggle for their liberation. And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made and remade
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