Quotes
pucker up for these mouthfuls

The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question "How can we eat?" the second by the question "Why do we eat?" and the third by the question "Where shall we have lunch?"

Douglas Adams. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The great contribution Archeology has ever provided society is the simple fact that everybody is destined to become a feature.

On being an Archeologist:
It takes very special qualities to devote one's life to problems with no attainable solutions and to poking around in dead people's garbage: Words like "masochistic," "nosy," and "completely batty" spring to mind.

Paul Bahn

I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again...the future is just going to be a vast conforming suburb of the soul.

J. G. Ballard

The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.

Max Beerbohm

The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences.

Ruth Benedict

Past,n.

That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance.

Ambrose Bierce

The best prophet of the future is the past.

Lord George Gordon Byron

If anyone were to ask me why I have spent my life studying prehistory, I would only say that I have remained under a spell of a subject which seeks to discover how we became human beings endowed with minds and souls before we had learned to write.

Grahame Clark

History is a vast early warning system.

Norman Cousins

The past always looks better than it was; it's only pleasant because it isn't here.

Finley Peter Dunne

Civilization Exists by geological consent, subject to change without any notice.

Will Durant

To archeologists, the human past is owned by no one. It represents the cultural heritage of everyone who has ever lived on Earth or will live on it in the future. Archaeology puts all human societies on an equal footing.

Brian Fagan

Culture is the jam in the sandwich of anthropology.

Robert Foley

Those who would question the present should investigate the past. Those who do not understand what is to come should look at what has gone before.

The Guanzi

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

L.P. Hartley

A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.

Robert Heinlein

It's not what you find, it's what you find out.

David Hurst Thomas

Archaeology is the search for fact. Not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Doctor Tyree's Philosophy class is right down the hall. So forget any ideas you've had about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure and "X" never, ever, marks the spot. Seventy percent of all archeology is done in the library. Research. Reading.

Indiana Jones

Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities.

A.L. Kroeber

Archaeology is fascinating to people when it is communicated to them in plain language.

William H. Marquardt

The past is still, for us, a place that is not safely settled.

Michael Ondaatje

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

George Orwell.  Nineteen Eighty-Four

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of the past.

Adrienne Rich

For four-fifths of our history, our planet was populated by pond scum.

J. William Schopf

The only use of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is a holy ground; for it is the past, and the future.

Alfred North Whitehead