Quotes from Jack Weatherford

Europeans experienced a Renaissance, literally a rebirth, but it was not the ancient world of Greece and Rome being reborn: It was the Mongol Empire, picked up, transferred, and adapted by the Europeans to their own needs and culture.

the greatest joy a man can know is to conquer his enemies and drive them before him. To ride their horses and take away their possessions. To see the faces of those who were dear to them bedewed

Service always outranked wealth; loyalty always outranked payments.

The Mongols operated a virtual propaganda machine that consistently inflated the number of people killed in battle and spread fear wherever its words carried.

The dual capacity for friendship and enmity forged in Genghis Khan's youth endured throughout his life and became the defining trait of his character.

To ensure accurate memorization, the officers composed their orders in rhyme, using a standardized system known to every soldier. The Mongol warriors used a set of fixed melodies and poetic styles into which various words could be improvised according to the meaning of the message. For a soldier, hearing the message was like learning a new verse to a song that he already knew.

Christians fought everyone, but mostly themselves, as bishops attacked bishops, popes excommunicated kings, kings created antipopes.

While continuing to worship the spirit of their grandfather Genghis Khan and making him into a virtual god, his heirs destroyed everything he created. Yet the more they destroyed, the more ritually important they made him.

A leader should demonstrate his thoughts and opinions through his actions, not through his words: "He can never be happy until his people are happy." He stressed to them the importance of vision, goals, and a plan. "Without the vision of a goal, a man cannot manage his own life, much less the lives of others," he told them.

Genghis Khan sought to further undermine his enemies by exploiting any internal social turmoil or rift he could identify. In

In keeping with his own sober manner and simple style of living, Genghis Khan warned them against the pursuit of a "colorful" life with material frivolities and wasteful pleasures. "It will be easy," he explained, "to forget your vision and purpose once you have fine clothes, fast horses, and beautiful women." In that case, "you will be no better than a slave, and you will surely lose everything.

Although there are many things you can rely on, no one is more reliable than yourself.

Tobacco was the first of the New World drugs to be widely accepted in the Old World, and the European zest for it played a major role in opening North America to colonization. Contemporary civic mythology of the United States overlooks this role of America as drug supplier to the world.

Fate did not hand Genghis Khan his destiny; he made it for himself.

work that he continued to develop throughout

By contrast, the subsequent waves of Puritans in their search for profits quickly uprooted all natives and sold many of them into slavery without bothering to extend to them the right to become Christian before being sold or killed.

He organized his warriors into squads, or arban, of ten who were to be brothers to one another. No matter what their kin group or tribal origin, they were ordered to live and fight together as loyally as brothers;

To clearly identify which refugees were Jewish refugees and to prevent their entering new Christian communities, the church ordered that Jews had to wear distinctive clothes and emblems to mark them for all to see.

In twenty-five years, the Mongol army subjugated more lands and people than the Romans had conquered in four hundred years. Genghis Khan, together with his sons and grandsons, conquered the most densely populated civilizations of the thirteenth century. Whether measured by the total number of people defeated, the sum of the countries annexed, or by the total area occupied, Genghis Khan conquered more than twice as much as any other man in history

Kill, don't mourn.

Without the vision of a goal, a man cannot manage his own life, much less the lives of others," he told them.

At his death in 1241, she became the official regent. For the next ten years, until 1251, she and a small group of other women controlled the largest empire in world history.

Friar Giovanni of Plano Carpini, a sixty-five-year-old cleric, who had been one of the disciples of Saint Francis of Assisi, arrived as the agent and spy for Pope Innocent IV, commissioned to find out as much as possible about these strange people who had threatened Europe.

discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production