84 Quotes by Bettany Hughes

For some reason I have always lived my life trying to make things slightly harder for myself rather than slightly easier. I think that's why I like the Spartans. I like the idea that you get much more satisfaction if you strive for it.

I travel all over the world, but I'm never happier than when I'm walking up the hill to pick up my children from school.

I do think that history lived, and a life lived, is as much to do with the birdsong you heard that morning as any great event.

Well Socrates is 70 when he dies. He's been allowed to philosophise freely in the city for almost 50 years. He clearly was - genius is an overused word - but he clearly did have something of the genius about him.

I think Socrates was fascinated by Alcibiades. It's almost the opposite of hypocrisy. I think it's like when you can see the potential in someone.

Plants are so important to the ancients for medicine and in a religious aspect - and in hemlock!

We think the way we do partly because Socrates thought the way he did. His basic idea - that the unexamined life is not worth living - is what it means to live in the modern world, to develop ideas and ask questions.

I cannot write history unless I travel to the places where it happened. I spent a lot of time walking around the Eastern Mediterranean, going to all the shrines that Socrates would have worshiped at, going to all the battlefields that he fought on.

Socrates was a great walker. They say he was a fiend for exercise. He was absolutely not shut away in some ivory tower somewhere.