The [Ancient] Egyptians… were gifted artists, brilliant engineers, indefatigable workers, and insane. Dazzling wealth, much of the economy of the world’s richest country, was buried forever, once in each reign, in a hidden and forgotten hole in the Theban desert or squandered on the fastidious megalithic masonry of a useless pyramin. It must be significant, somehow, that civilization at its first great height was so irrational (1985: 326-327).
Friday, July 18, 2008
Quote: Quine on the Ancient Egyptians
I was looking through an old intellectual notebook of mine and I came across a cool quote I wrote down from W. V. O. Quine's autobiography, The Time of My Life:
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Mike, only you would refer to it as an 'intellectual notebook' rather than simply a 'notebook'. Classic.
ReplyDeleteOh hush! :)
ReplyDeleteA great quotation - which I'd forgotten in this centennial year of his birth (www.wvquine.org). Interestingly his wife (my mother) was also an accomplished Egyptologist! (www.quine.org/mb-quine.html)
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