26 Quotes by Ian Mortimer

You can tell that things are fundamentally wrong when a statute has to be passed (in 1330) to stop galoers [jailers] refusing to accept certain prisoners. It seems they are refusing to imprison criminals who are not rich enough to bribe them.Justice is a relative concept in all ages. The fourteenth century is no exception.

Guy de Chauliac’s advice to those wishing to avoid infection is as follows: ‘Go quickly, go far, and return slowly.

W H. Auden once suggested that to understand your own country you need to have lived in at least two others. One can say something similar for periods of time: to understand your own century you need to have come to terms with at least two others. The key to learning something about the past might be a ruin or an archive but the means whereby we may understand it is – and always will be – ourselves.

Literature is a means to delight the mind and embolden the spirit.

Most Elizabethan men will shake their heads in disbelief if you suggest the idea of the equality of the sexes. No two men are born equal – some are born rich, some poor; the elder of two brothers will succeed to his father’s estates, not the younger – so why should men and women be treated equally?

History is not just about the analysis of evidence, unrolling vellum documents or answering exam papers. It is not about judging the dead. It is about understanding the meaning of the past – to realize the whole evolving human story over centuries, not just our own lifetimes.

Oscar Wilde once quipped, “The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything and the young know everything.

The man who has no knowledge of the past has no wisdom.

Lord Acton’s famous phrase: ’power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.