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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
61cd121	In every age, people are certain that only the things they have deemed valuable have true value. The search for love and the search for wealth are always the two best stories. But while a love story is timeless, the story of a quest for wealth, given enough time, will always seem like the vain pursuit of a mirage.			Mark Kurlansky
ea22b24	Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is a natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach ..		evolution nature science natural-world extinction ecology humans	Mark Kurlansky
a32ea1b	modern people have seen too many chemicals and are ready to go back to eating dirt.			Mark Kurlansky
282cb01	ENEMIES OFTEN become mirror images of each other.			Mark Kurlansky
a791592	It is not an overstatement to say that the destiny of the entire human race depends on what is going on in America today. This is a staggering reality to the rest of the world; they must feel like passengers in a supersonic jetliner who are forced to watch helplessly while a passel of drunks, hypes, freaks, and madmen fight for the controls and the pilot's seat. - Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice, 1968		politics leadership	Mark Kurlansky
6800638	Even the name, Celt, is not from their own Indo-European language but from Greek. Keltoi, the name given to them by Greek historians, among them Herodotus, means "one who lives in hiding or under cover." The Romans, finding them less mysterious, called them Galli or Gauls, also coming from a Greek word, used by Egyptians as well, hal, meaning "salt." They were the salt people."			Mark Kurlansky
7bb86e1	In February 1912, ancient China came to an end when the last of three millennia of Chinese emperors abdicated. Imagine twentieth-century Italy coming to terms with the fall of the Roman empire or Egypt with the last pharaoh abdicating in 1912. For China, the last century has been a period of transition - dramatic change and perpetual revolution.		world-history civilization modernity rome egypt	Mark Kurlansky
01b7002	A 1670 revision of the criminal code found yet another use for salt in France. To enforce the law against suicide, it was ordered that the bodies of people who took their own lives be salted, brought before a judge, and sentenced to public display. Nor could the accused escape their day in court by dying in the often miserable conditions of the prisons. They too would be salted and put on trial. Breton historians have discovered that in 178..			Mark Kurlansky
f7ac06a	Children need fairy tales, but it is just as essential that they have parents who tell them about their own lives, so that they can establish a relationship to the past.		identity legacy	Mark Kurlansky
928b7ad	In the Middle Ages, adultery was thought to be a major cause of the herring leaving.			Mark Kurlansky
c5742e1	The main body of Vikings were given lands in the Seine basin in exchange for protecting Paris. They settled into northern France and within a century were speaking a dialect of French and became known as the Normans.			Mark Kurlansky
384d09b	If all poor people refused to fight, he argued, the rich would have no army and there would be no war.			Mark Kurlansky
645bc1b	The Roman army required salt for its soldiers and for its horses and livestock. At times soldiers were even paid in salt, which was the origin of the word salary and the expression "worth his salt" or "earning his salt." In fact, the Latin word sal became the French word solde, meaning pay, which is the origin of the word, soldier."			Mark Kurlansky
829480b	Salt is so common, so easy to obtain, and so inexpensive that we have forgotten that from the beginning of civilization until about 100 years ago, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history.			Mark Kurlansky
9c477bd	It takes two years for the salt to reach the center of a wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.			Mark Kurlansky
83ca4ea	Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is the natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is a part of evolution.			Mark Kurlansky
4680fef	For a time, the Hanseatics were well appreciated as honorable merchants who ensured quality and fought against unscrupulous practices. They were known as Easterlings because they came from the east, and this is the origin of the word sterling, which meant "of assured value."			Mark Kurlansky
47ed90d	THE ROMANS SALTED their greens, believing this to counteract the natural bitterness, which is the origin of the word salad, salted.			Mark Kurlansky
0570df0	Proteins unwind when exposed to heat, and they do the same when exposed to salt. So salting has an effect resembling cooking.			Mark Kurlansky
fe92b61	Mohandas's marriage, which was arranged when he was thirteen, lasted for the next sixty-two years. Despite his enduring reputation for living a life of simplicity and self-denial, he did not come to this easily and struggled in his youth with uncontrolled appetites, both sexual and gastronomic. In violation of his family's religious code, he experimented with meat eating, hoping it would make him large and strong like the carnivorous Englis..			Mark Kurlansky
4b35352	The Chinese had first learned of the Roman Empire in 139 B.C., when the emperor Wudi had sent an envoy, Zhang Qian, past the deserts to seek allies to the west. Zhang Qian traveled for twelve years to what is now Turkistan and back and reported on the astounding discovery that there was a fairly advanced civilization to the west. In 104 B.C. and 102 B.C., Chinese armies reached the area, a former Greek kingdom called Sogdiana with its capit..			Mark Kurlansky
976441a	Even creative nonviolence can go unnoticed unless participants are attacked.		suffering	Mark Kurlansky
65f5f99	When these early settlers hunted, they would leave red herring along their trail because the strong smell would confuse wolves, which is the origin of the expression red herring, meaning "a false trail."			Mark Kurlansky
73499b6	The Egyptians of 4000 B.C. believed that the goddess Isis, wife of Osiris, taught them how to grow olives. The Greeks have a similar legend. But the Hebrew word for olive, zait, is probably older than the Greek word, elaia, and is thought to refer to Said in the Nile Delta.			Mark Kurlansky
cafd482	It is a peculiarity of the English language that while most fish swim in schools, herring swim in shoals, a word of the same meaning derived from the same Anglo-Saxon root.			Mark Kurlansky
39ddf02	Pastrami, of Romanian origin, is dried, spiced, and salted beef, smoked over hardwood sawdust and then steamed. The name may come from pastra, the Romanian verb "to preserve."			Mark Kurlansky
d7e1fa4	In nineteenth-century Russia, sauerkraut was valued more than caviar,			Mark Kurlansky
7d1c879	To the glee of the British press, a letter has recently been discovered. The letter had been sent to Christopher Columbus, a decade after the Croft affair in Bristol, while Columbus was taking bows for his discovery of America. The letter, from Bristol merchants, alleged that he knew perfectly well that they had been to America already. It is not known if Columbus ever replied. He didn't need to. Fishermen were keeping their secrets, while ..			Mark Kurlansky
e382127	Under the rules of colonialism, everything goes to and comes from the mother country. In 1870, the colony of Turks and Caicos was asked to send a crest to England so that a flag for the colony could be designed. A Turks and Caicos designer drew a crest that included Salt Cay saltworks with salt rakers in the foreground and piles of salt. Back in England, it was the era of Arctic exploration, and, not knowing where the Turks and Caicos was, ..			Mark Kurlansky
a54e0dc	That was when the Venetians made an important discovery. More money could be made buying and selling salt than producing it. Beginning in 1281, the government paid merchants a subsidy on salt landed in Venice from other areas. As a result, shipping salt to Venice became so profitable that the same merchants could afford to ship other goods at prices that undersold their competitors. Growing fat on the salt subsidy, Venice merchants could af..			Mark Kurlansky
b292f2d	history's greatest lessons is that once the state embraces a religion, the nature of that religion changes radically. It loses its nonviolent component			Mark Kurlansky
03e16b0	nonviolent force is a moral argument. The lesson is that if the nonviolent side can be led to violence, they have lost the argument and they are destroyed.			Mark Kurlansky
99da990	It was said that in the markets to the south of Taghaza salt was exchanged for its weight in gold, which was an exaggeration. The misconception comes from the West African style of silent barter noted by Herodotus and subsequently by many other Europeans. In the gold-producing regions of West Africa, a pile of gold would be set out, and a salt merchant would counter with a pile of salt, each side altering their piles until an agreement was ..			Mark Kurlansky
0dad00a	The Roman historian Plutarch estimated that the civilized Romans under Julius Caesar, in his decade-long campaign in Gaul, destroyed 800 towns and villages and enslaved 3 million people.			Mark Kurlansky
66efc56	In the first century A.D., Pliny estimated that the average Roman citizen consumed only 25 grams of salt a day. The modern American consumes even less if the salt content of packaged food is not included.			Mark Kurlansky
b974bd3	The hams of Westphalia, which were dried, salted, and then smoked with unique local woods--a recipe still followed today in Westphalia--were very popular with Romans.			Mark Kurlansky
8d718c4	Take the tail of the female tuna--and I'm talking of the large female tuna whose mother city is Byzantium.			Mark Kurlansky
a58efe4	It became a requirement of prosciutto di Parma that it be made from pigs that had been fed the whey from Parmesan cheese. Less choice parts of pigs fed on this whey qualified to be sent to the nearby town of Felino, where they were ground up and made into salami. (The word salami is derived from the Latin verb to salt.)			Mark Kurlansky
5cee897	It would be folly to assume that an Indian Rockefeller would be better than an American Rockefeller.			Mark Kurlansky
fb652de	Nevertheless, Rouen merchants who sold craspoix to the English paid high tariffs at London Bridge, which suggests this salted whale blubber was a luxury product in England. This would not be the last time the food of French peasants was sold as a treat for wealthy Englishmen.			Mark Kurlansky
84f52d2	Viking is a term--thought to have its root in the old Norse vika, meaning "to go off"--for Scandinavians who left their native land to seek wealth in commerce."			Mark Kurlansky
5a5c2f7	Honore-Gabriel Riqueti, the Comte de Mirabeau, the man who had defied Louis XVI by opening the National Assembly, said, "In the final analysis, the people will judge the revolution by this fact alone--does it take more or less money? Are they better off? Do they have more work? And is that work better paid?"			Mark Kurlansky
ce29bba	Massachusetts, like Queen Elizabeth, encouraged salt making through the granting of monopolies to those who showed the skill to produce salt cheaply. The colony granted Samuel Winslow a ten-year monopoly to employ his ideas on salt producing, which is considered the first patent issued in America.			Mark Kurlansky
0633199	One of the gabelle's most irritating inventions was the sel du devoir, the salt duty. Every person in the Grande Gabelle over the age of eight was required to purchase seven kilograms (15.4 pounds) of salt each year at a fixed high government price. This was far more salt than could possibly be used, unless it was for making salt fish, sausages, hams, and other salt-cured goods. But using the sel du devoir to make salted products was illega..			Mark Kurlansky

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