Quotes from Arthur Herman

The credit for defining the artist as a person who can hold two inconsistent ideas at once goes to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The credit for realizing that that is precisely what all modern men can do—indeed, must be able to do— belongs to Sir Walter Scott.

The man who discovered the power behind that authority was not Gutenberg or Caxton or even Luther. It was Erasmus of Rotterdam.

The universe, Galileo wrote, "is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single world of it." Without mathematics, he concluded, "one wanders about in a dark labyrinth"—or what Plato might have called a cave.

He believed you could do everything by formulas and fourteen points. God Himself was content with ten commandments

The highest form of life, Aristotle said, was that of the householder, who "as a citizen shared in the civic life of ruling and being ruled in turn."5 That certainly sounded a lot like life in 1402 Florence as well as fifth-century BCE Athens.

This world offers a form of liberty—the freedom to pursue one's own self-interest—and a form of authority: the power of the magistrate "to punish transgressors, to correct fraud and violence, and to oblige men, however reluctant, to consult their own real and permanent [long-term] interests.

So the basis of Aristotle's secure and stable order is not the Philosopher Ruler, but the good citizen who participates actively in the political, social, and economic life of his community.

Furthermore, the citizen contributed to this free self-governing community in not one but two ways. First, he practiced the virtues of the free man, including cultivating and growing the fruits of his economic freedom—something the average Florentine merchant or shopkeeper certainly understood. Second, he contributed by becoming an active part of civic life.

Holy Scripture and Nature are both emanations from the divine Word." Like other Platonists, Galileo didn't have to see God to believe in Him. He only had to feel His perfection in His creation and stand aside in awe.

Few students or teachers were interested in Cicero or Erasmus's other literary heroes. There was, however, a new teacher at Magdalen College named John Colet, who had immersed himself in the humanism coming out of Italy and its Platonist themes. He and Erasmus found an instant harmony. In listening to Colet speak, Erasmus wrote later, he "seemed to be listening to Plato himself."14

a lively Platonic-style dialogue in everyday Italian, called Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. It would finally prove to every reader why the Copernican heliocentric view was right and the old Aristotelian view wrong: all with—he hoped—the approval of the pope himself. In the spring of 1632, the work was finally finished. Galileo was approaching seventy.

America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other."8

By training his soldiers to lunge with their bayonets not at the charging Highlander in front of them, but at the one to their right as he raised his arm to strike and thus exposed himself to a lethal thrust, Cumberland now had the tactic that could counteract the violent shock of the clansmen's charge. His troops sensed for the first time that they could beat the Jacobites in a pitched battle.

Starting with chapter 1, Smith explains how the business of civilization gets done, by isolating the basic principle that explains all social improvement: the division of labor. This is Smith's term. The idea itself probably originated with David Hume, who called it "the partition of employments." We use another, perhaps better, word for it: specialization.

life."6 In short, a democracy like Athens or a republic like Florence was a cooperative partnership, in which men agree to be the best they can be in both their public and their private lives, instead of (as in Plato's Republic) having those rules imposed from above.

This Platonized Christian God also made Plato's Forms seem more real, as the eternal patterns existing in the mind of God out of which He built heaven, earth, and the rest of His creation.

The study of history is Ã¢â'¬Â¦ the only method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of Fortune. —Polybius (200–118 BCE)

More than any previous work, Galileo's Dialogue showed that if Copernicus wasn't right on every detail of the working of the solar system, Aristotle and Ptolemy were both very clearly wrong. The first printing sold out almost at once.

Politics on Plato's terms becomes prescriptive, a series of formulae for shaping man and society into what they should be rather than accepting things as they are. Politics on Aristotle's terms will be largely descriptive, in which the more we discover about human nature, the more we recognize our powerlessness to effect real change.

In short, a democracy like Athens or a republic like Florence was a cooperative partnership, in which men agree to be the best they can be in both their public and their private lives, instead of (as in Plato's Republic) having those rules imposed from above. Only under liberty could men realize their true nature as human beings both as free individuals and as part of a greater whole.

Intellectuals in Edinburgh were thrilled, not offended, when in the summer of 1761 the Irish actor and "orthoepist" (or pronunciation expert) Thomas Sheridan arrived in town to offer a series of lectures on English elocution.

translation of the New Testament in 1516. By exposing many of the errors of the old Latin Vulgate, Erasmus established a new appreciation for "pure Scripture" as the final authority on all things spiritual as well as many secular.

All the great peoples of democracy . . . have taken that place in the battle that was destined for them. They work for the triumph not of one alone, but of all."10

This was why the ancient Athenians had defied the tyranny of Persia against all odds. This was why the early Romans had risked everything to overthrow their kings, so that they could live free or die. And that was why the Florentines had to be ready to die to defend their liberty, Leonardo Bruni concluded—because without liberty, "life [has] no meaning for them.