Quotes from Kim MacQuarrie

You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." THUCYDIDES, THE HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, 5TH CENTURY B.C.

The Incas, although an authoritarian monarchy, had succeeded nevertheless during their short reign not only in creating a massive empire, but perhaps more importantly in guaranteeing all of the empire's millions of inhabitants the basic necessities of life: adequate food, water, and shelter. It was an achievement that no subsequent government -- Spanish or Peruvian -- has attained since

In Spanish culture in the sixteenth century, the ages between thirty and forty-five were considered the prime years for men, that is, those were the years in which a man was considered to be both mature and to have the most energy.

The Incas' genius— like that of the Romans—lay in their masterful organizational abilities. Amazingly, an ethnic group that probably never exceeded 100,000 individuals was able to regulate the activities of roughly ten million people. This was in spite of the fact that the empire's citizens spoke more than seven hundred local languages and were distributed among 2,500 miles of some of the most rugged and diverse terrain on earth.

The wars that are to be feared the most and are the cruelest are the civil wars. Rome was never threatened as much by its [foreign] enemies such as Pyrrhus and Hannibal as it was by its own citizens.

Beginning in about 3200 b.c.—roughly during the same period when the Egyptians were building their first pyramids—people on Peru's northern coast began building terraced mounds alongside large plazas, ceremonial architecture, and large-scale settlements.

Somewhere during Darwin's long journey, however, his ideas about the world shifted and he began peering at it freshly, from a different point of view. That shift ultimately led him to