Top 80 Quotes & Sayings by Bettany Hughes

Even the picturesque prehistoric settlements at Akrotiri on the Greek island of Santorini were an exercise in problem-solving; white-washed homes and town halls built with an anti-earthquake technology still employed today, 3,500 years on.

I think it's ironic when Plato makes the learned woman Aspasia Socrates' teacher, but I think women crop up more in the Platonic dialogues than they do normally in texts of the period, and in an un-hysterical way.

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.

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

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.

Hapy, the ancient god of the Nile, depicted at Dendera with Cleopatra, is typically shown with breasts - symbolism that demonstrated how the life-giving gifts of Egypt's river artery come only when the power of both female and male was combined.

A number of politicians have failed to recognise the consistent truth of history: that we're both an emotional and a rational species, and that we make decisions very emotionally.

As soon as men began to write, they made Helen of Troy their subject; for close on three thousand years she has been both the embodiment of absolute female beauty and a reminder of the terrible power that beauty can wield... But who was she?

Cricket's in the blood - my dad loves it and my brother Simon played for Middlesex before becoming a radio and TV cricket commentator.

I love the Bronze Age - the age of the Trojan Wars and Helen of Troy. Contrary to what people think, Troy was a very sophisticated society and they used ostrich eggs - which have surprisingly tough shells - to store perfumed oils.

Children hop around Phylakopi on sea-polished pebbles the size of bean bags and bask themselves, alongside the lizards, astride the sturdily built walls of Iron Age homes.

People seek change not only when threats and opportunities appear, but when we get tired of the ways things are.

Europe's leaders need to sit down with Socrates for a night; a life unexamined is not worth living. We have to remember that, as he says, the pursuit of wealth should never be at the expense of wisdom.

The presence of industrial quantities of Byzantine pottery dating from the sixth century AD on the headland at Tintagel, Chinese silk in the tombs around Mecca and 'Arabic' numerals in the 13th-century beams of Salisbury Cathedral tell us we have been interdependent not for decades but across millennia.

Ancient Egyptian women had rights under the law. They could own land. Many were literate.

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.

If I had my way there would be a philosopher sitting round the table on every committee and in every boardroom.

We've lived in our Victorian house for 20 years and the kitchen is the centre of family life - we don't just eat here, we live here.

I cannot write about the past unless I go where history happened. Some make very good armchair historians, I'm not one of them. If you're going to inhabit someone else's world, the very least you can do is to spend a little time in it.

The Nile has long nourished women and men alike. On the Nile and the magical, river-island Temple of Philae, Florence Nightingale was so inspired that she resolved to follow her calling in nursing.

Time and time again in history, it's the emotional argument that wins. Probably since 70,000 BC we've been making decisions in a similar way.

Of all the human figurines discovered so far from 30,000-3,000BC, 92% are of the female form. This is not to say there was any kind of matriarchy or worship of a mother goddess - far from it - but women are conspicuous by their presence.

Forgiveness gives you a chance to be fulfilled rather than be eaten up with anger.

A journey through the Mediterranean is not only inspiring and stimulating, it is also humbling. The men and women who created antique treasures for us to marvel at had to deal with plague, genocide, a world without writing, iron tools, or penicillin - and yet they made something extraordinary of their life and times.

Territorial expansion demands warriors and, once population levels are stable, demotes the female role. Once religious empires have not just an idea but a territory to call their own, the soldiers of god are of more value than his handmaidens.

Rumour, gossip, slander - single drops of poison can pollute an entire system.

It's become this sort of strange competition about who's in the coolest place, who's in the coolest street. Suddenly we're having to engage with all those social pressures. It's helpful, I find, as a mother and a teacher, to say you've always got a choice.

I wrote my first history book when I was four. I still have it so I can prove it.

People tend to have a knee-jerk response to the word 'philosophy'. You imagine it's abstract and inaccessible.

My guilty pleasure at the end of the day is an old thesaurus. I know that can lead to overwriting, but if words such as lambent, pyretic and boscy exist, how sad they should stay recondite.

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.

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

We've become embarrassed about asking ourselves the straightforward, simple questions that are actually the most relevent: what is it to be human? How can we steer a course between self-indulgence and self-denial and be the very best version of ourselves that we can?

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.

It was this epic adventure and I had this mad idea that it would be interesting to follow the Greek hero Odysseus on his trail from what is modern day Turkey to the west of Greece. He took 10 years to do that and I took six months. I was on 27 different boats for 1,700 miles and I went to 13 different islands.

My best writing day starts with coffee from our local Cypriot cafe and a newspaper from the Tamil corner shop - they always ask what I'm up to, and why I haven't brushed my hair - then a short, sharp walk. I think as I go.

One of the flashpoints of the grand war between Athens and Sparta, a millennium after Helen first caused trouble for the Mediterranean world, was nearby Thassos. Thassos - Greece's northernmost island, is pine-rich, honey-sweet, gold-bearing and picture-postcard perfect.

I am irrationally irritated by those who cast the Mediterranean in a balmy, Augustan perma-glow.

By day I am a historian, by night a broadcaster.

If the Halcyon days of a Mediterranean winter, god-blessed, were good enough for sublime kingfishers they should certainly have something to offer us all.

Economic, political and military intervention following the first world war is frequently blamed for current friction between east and west.

Name the 10 most influential men in history and the debate can rage for hours; when it comes to women, after number six or seven many start to grope around for inspiration.

The word 'America' probably didn't appear in the Persian language until the end of the 18th century - but then with a documented past stretching back at least 5,000 years, the east had riches of its own.

A lot of the clothes I wear on telly are second-hand.

Istanbul in the snow is a wonder. The extravagant pleasures on show in the Topkapi Palace Museum - the sultan's robes thickly lined with squirrel fur, mobile foot-braziers to keep out a cold that whips relentlessly off the Bosphorus - presage modern-day sultanic delights.

Venus, ancient goddess of love and beauty, is an apparently irrelevant, invented deity of the long dead. But Venus merits scrutiny. Chart her life story across 5,000 years and you chart the evolution of our conflicted relationship with sex and with the female body.

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.

I'm a Benedictine Nun in outlook; I divide my time evenly so one third is spent in academe, another third on writing and the final third on television and radio.

You're a good presenter if you know your subject and you can communicate it with passion. Period. That's all that matters on telly.

My father, who is now 94, was an actor. The prime thing he taught us as children was to walk through the world with our eyes open.

When she stepped out of that spumy sea Aphrodite was said to have brought fertility, flowers, life, light to a barren world. For centuries women and men went to her sanctuaries to seek her pity and protection. Her domain was originally not just lust, but lust for life.

The 'Middle Ages/Dark Ages' were of course no such thing. Achievement in the Arabian crescent was sensational then.

Socrates was tried in a religious court. He was condemned for disregarding Athens' gods. If you look at the way he speaks at his trial, according to Plato, there seems to be a moment when he realizes this isn't just a game.

To me that is what the Odyssey is all about, it's about being in the world and unexpected challenges and dangers are thrown at you.

Venus's life story across 5,000 years reminds us not to trivialise the power of desire: the ancients were right to never underestimate its influence.

The occasional motivational speech gig tends to pay better than the books and television.

Taught by actor parents never to leave an awkward gap in the conversation I gabble out unsolicited responses to fill the voids.

Aphrodite-Venus had become not a subject of adoration, but an agent of exploitation. From the moment Christian society perceived sex not as a gift of the goddess but a crime against God himself, women were believed to be the vessels of love's malign power.

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.

Slipping down into the bedrock 100m inside the partially excavated tomb of Pharaoh Senwosret at Abydos, I really thought I was going to die. Oxygen levels are dangerously low and, with over 90 per cent humidity, it was hard to breathe - we were all drenched with sweat.