Quotes from Susan Wise Bauer

Albert of Wallenstein] loved war. He was very tall and skeletally thin, usually dressed in sinister black, with a single streak of red. "[He is] unmerciful," wrote the astronomer Johannes Kepler, describing Wallenstein, "devoted only to himself and his desires...covetous, deceitful...usually silent, often violent.

William Penn planned to use this land for a colony where Quaker ideas would be followed. He wanted the settlers to be like brothers, all equal to each other. The capital city would be called the City of Brotherly Love--in Greek, Philadelphia.

The Han Chinese] gathered to oppose their Manchu overlords, shouting, "Keep your hair, even if you lose your head!

The days of kings and lords first began to lose their brightness when philosophers and scientists realized that the ancient Greeks, who had long been held up as the wisest men in the world, were sometimes wrong.

Galileo was one of the first scientists to use the scientific method. Instead of accepting old ideas, he carefully observed the world around him, and then tried to make a theory that would explain his observations.

Newton wrote, "Amicus Plato amicus Aristoteles magis amica veritas." That is Latin for, "Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my best friend is truth." When

Peter the Great] also wanted women to take off their veils and mingle with men at social gatherings. He even wanted them to have tutors and be educated like men.

Despite the starvation and the hard work, some of the prisoners realized that life in Australia was actually better than life back in England. In England, they had been beggars with no way to get land of their own.

began to establish their own kingdoms, all over the land that once

there were three men for every woman in Australia! Australia needed women. A committee in London was formed to send young women to Australia for only five pounds.

Part of the school dilemma results from an over-focus on testing results; home educators are free from that pressure, so you won't have to decide between test prep and expository writing.

In his scientific notebook, Newton wrote, "Amicus Plato amicus Aristoteles magis amica veritas." That is Latin for, "Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my best friend is truth.

In [Two Treatises of Government], John Locke explained that he had discovered universal laws that could predict how people should act. Every man and woman, Locke wrote, was equal. Every human being had, by "natural law," the right to seek "life, health, liberty, and possession.

And who would be willing to travel through hundreds of miles of wilderness, risking capture, carrying a letter telling the French to retreat? A young Virginian volunteered. George Washington, only twenty-one years old... found a wilderness guide and a translator to accompany him and set off...

The only men ruthless enough to fight against tyranny were themselves inclined to it.

Civilization began in the Fertile Crescent, not because it was an Edenic place overflowing with natural resources, but because it was so hostile to settlement that a village of any size needed careful management to survive.

Pippin ordered Childeric III tonsured and sent to a monastery, where he died five years later, the last of the Merovingians.

Pippin was crowned the first king of the Carolingian dynasty in the city of Soissons, in a brand-new sacred ceremony that involved anointing with holy oil in the manner of an Old Testament theocratic king.*

The idea that fast reading is good reading is a twentieth-century weed, springing out of the stony farmland cultivated by the computer manufacturers.

A debt-free bachelor's degree is, as it turns out, priceless: As Jane Austen puts it, it sets you up forever. My friends were still paying off their school loans in their forties. I never had any school debt at all. Because I had no debt, I could choose my life, and choose my adventure.

The goal of classical self-education is this: not merely to "stuff" facts into your head, but to understand them. Incorporate them into your mental framework. Reflect on their meaning for the internal life.

Today, most people "go to work." But back at the beginning of the nineteenth century, "going to work" was a brand new idea. Families had always worked together in their homes.

Underline in your books, jot notes in the margins, and turn the corners of your pages down. Public education is a beautiful dream, but public classrooms too often train students not to mark, write in, disfigure, or in any way make books permanently their own. You're a grownup now, so buy your own books if you possibly can. In my opinion, a cheap paperback filled with your own notes is worth five times as much as a beautiful collector's edition.

the twelfth-century Song of Roland, which turns the bloody incident into a major conspiracy between the Arabs of Zaragoza and a traitor within Charlemagne's own camp.