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A History of the World
Andrew Marr
Top 10 Best Quotes
“all those roads and ports, spread these belief systems faster. Some seem to have mingled ancient beliefs with Buddhist and Hindu thinking – the ‘New Age’ faiths of two millennia”
“Writing a history of the world is a ridiculous thing to do. The amount of information is too vast for any individual to absorb, the reading limitless and the likelihood of error immense. The only case for doing it, and for reading it, is that not having a sense of world history is even more ridiculous.”
“What drives history is the human ambition to alter one’s condition to match one’s hopes.’3”
“We stand not on the shoulders of giants, but on the shoulders of our grandparents and of our great-great-great-grandparents too.”
“We probably wiped out other human types, we certainly wiped out other mammals; and throughout our history we have, in the intervals between making art and love, tried very hard to wipe out each other. We began, and we remain, agents of instability.”
“They then named one day after the Moon and another after the Sun, giving them a seven-day week. Seven was regarded as a perfect number; and the Sumerian week is of course our week, its days still named in the Sumerian fashion, though with Roman or Old English words. Saturn becomes Saturday, Sol (‘the sun’ in Latin) becomes Sunday. Luna, the moon, becomes lundi in French, or our Monday (Moon-day). Mars is mardi, though in English, thanks to a Norse god, Tuesday. Similarly, Wednesday is Wodin’s day, but Wodin was the god associated with the planet Mercury. Jupiter is jeudi; or in English, Thursday, Thor being the northern god associated with Jupiter. Venus is vendredi, or Friday. The Sumerians also developed a counting system based on the number sixty, which is divisible by eleven other numbers and so particularly handy for Bronze Age accountancy. From this we get our 60-second minutes, 60-minute hours, 360-day years and 360-degree circles.”
“The words ‘lost civilization of Atlantis’ are muttered. This is how many modern Europeans like to think of their earlier selves – peaceable, artistic, liberated and romantically doomed – a story that is half-Eden and half the Titanic. But it is almost all bull.”
“The death-tolls during the last years of the Qing dynasty and in China’s forty years of non-Communist republican government are impossible to be precise about, but the figures are estimated to be very large.”
“The Sumerians plotted the movements of the five planets they could see – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – and named a day after each. They then named one day after the Moon and another after the Sun, giving them a seven-day week.”
“The Sumerians also developed a counting system based on the number sixty, which is divisible by eleven other numbers and so particularly handy for Bronze Age accountancy. From this we get our 60-second minutes, 60-minute hours, 360-day years and 360-degree circles.”
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