Mark Kurlansky Quotes & Sayings

In eighteenth-century England, anchovy sauce became known as ketchup, katchup, or catsup. — Mark Kurlansky

Nobody can easily bring together a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese' (Charles de Gaulle, 1961 speech) — Mark Kurlansky

In fact, the first experiments in refrigeration were not with fish or meat but with everyone's favorite luxury - butter. — Mark Kurlansky

When my enemies seek my life, how can I do other than use my endeavor to destroy them in my own defense? The — Mark Kurlansky

In 1411, the French Crown granted a patent declaring that only the cheese of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon could be called Roquefort cheese. — Mark Kurlansky

Under English law the penalty for eating meat on Friday was hanging. The law remained on the books until the sixteenth century, when Henry VIII broke with the Vatican. — Mark Kurlansky

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, the English designer assumed the little white domes were igloos. And so he drew doors on each one. And this scene of salt piles with doors remained the official crest of the colony for almost 100 years, until replaced in 1968 by a crest featuring a flamingo. — Mark Kurlansky

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

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 reached. No words were exchanged during this process, which might take days. The salt merchants often arrived at night to adjust their piles and leave unseen. They were extremely secretive, not wanting to reveal the location of their deposits. From this it was reported in Europe that salt was exchanged in Africa for its weight in gold. But it is probable that the final agreed-upon two piles were never of equal weight. — Mark Kurlansky

nunna daul Tsuny in the Cherokee language, — Mark Kurlansky

Revolutions are always easier to admire from across the border. — Mark Kurlansky

It was one thing to talk of using technology to topple the authority of the aristocracy and the Church, but who or what would replace them? Diderot and the French revolutionaries had assumed it would be "the people." But as the nineteenth-century French historian Jules Michelet once wryly observed, "The people, in its highest ideal, is difficult to find in the people." As — Mark Kurlansky

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

The painstakingly extracted purple dye was a luxury item of such prestige that the color purple became a way of showing wealth and power. — Mark Kurlansky

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 1784 in the town of Cornouaille, Maurice LeCorre had died in prison and was ordered salted for trial. But due to some bureaucratic error, the corpse did not get a trial date and was found by a prison guard more than seven years later, not only salted but fermented in beer, at which point it was buried without trial. — Mark Kurlansky

Food is a central activity of mankind and one of the single most significant trademarks of a culture. — Mark Kurlansky

The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776 All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force. - Karl Marx, speech, 1856 Dreams are not so different from deeds as some may think. All the deeds of men are only dreams at first. And in the end, their deeds dissolve into dreams. - Theodor Herzl, Old New Land, 1902 — Mark Kurlansky

THE ROMANS SALTED their greens, believing this to counteract the natural bitterness, which is the origin of the word salad, salted. — Mark Kurlansky

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

The true expression of nonviolence is compassion, which is not just a passive emotional response, but a rational stimulus to action. — Mark Kurlansky

I did not realize at the time, as I have discovered since, that anyone who attempts any thing original in this world must expect a bit of ridicule. Clarence Birdseye — Mark Kurlansky

The adversary must first be made into a demon before people will accept the war. This was why during the Cold War, the U.S. government became infuriated at any — Mark Kurlansky

They leaned over and scooped up handfuls of salt. The police tried to forcibly remove the salt from their hands. A crowd of dissidents ran onto the beach, picked up salt, and were taken away by the police. The protests went on for days, with waves of salt makers followed by waves of police followed by more salt makers. The police called in reinforcements. Soon the jails were filled, and more and more police and protesters were rushing into Inchuri. The police staged charges, harmless but designed to scare. It didn't work. — Mark Kurlansky

Butter has the same improbable myth of origin as cheese, that it accidentally got churned in the animal skins of central Asian nomads. Easily spoiled in sunlight, it was a northern food. The Celts and the Vikings, and their descendants, the Normans, are credited with popularizing butter in northern Europe. Southerners remained suspicious and for centuries maintained that the reason more cases of leprosy were found in the north was that northerners ate butter. Health-conscious southern clergy and noblemen, when they had to travel to northern Europe, would guard against the dreaded disease by bringing their own olive oil with them. — Mark Kurlansky

The parallels between preserving food and preserving mummies were apparently not lost on posterity. In the nineteenth century, when mummies from Saqqara and Thebes were taken from tombs and brought to Cairo, they were taxed as salted fish before being permitted entry to the city. — Mark Kurlansky

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

Violence requires few ideas, but nonviolence requires imagination. — Mark Kurlansky

Whenever I was called a gourmet, I suspected I was being accused of something at least slightly unpleasant. But that was before I heard the term "foodie." I am still not sure that a gourmet is a good thing to be, but it must be better than a foodie. — Mark Kurlansky

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 demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us. — Mark Kurlansky

Unique to Sichuan, ma is the spicy flavor of a wild tree peppercorn called huajiao - with a taste between peppercorn, caraway, and clove, but so strong that too much will numb the mouth. Two varieties grow in Sichuan, clay red peppercorns and the more perfumey brown ones. La means "hot spice" and is accomplished with small burning red peppers. The combined seasoning, ma-la, defines the taste of Sichuan food. — Mark Kurlansky

The history of the Americas is one of constant warfare over salt, — Mark Kurlansky

In 1352, Ibn Batuta, the greatest Arab-language traveler of the Middle Ages, who had journeyed overland across Africa, Europe, and Asia, reported visiting the city of Taghaza, which, he said, was entirely built of salt, including an elaborate mosque. — Mark Kurlansky

International League of Peace and Freedom, was formed in 1867 in Geneva. Its — Mark Kurlansky

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

Theoretically, pickling can be accomplished without salt, but the carbohydrates and proteins in the vegetables tend to putrefy too quickly to be saved by the emerging lactic acid. Without salt, yeast forms, and the fermentation process leads to alcohol rather than pickles. — Mark Kurlansky

Jamming was our ally. It made people curious about what we were hiding. — Mark Kurlansky

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 capital in Samarkand, where they met and defeated a force partly composed of captive Roman soldiers. — Mark Kurlansky

And another small point, or two actually; Aldus was the first to use the modern semicolon. — Mark Kurlansky

A superpower that no longer stands for anything, that no one believes in anymore, that is seen only as a bully, will fall despite its military might. If the Bush administration ever wanted to reflect on history, it might think about this. — Mark Kurlansky

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

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

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

Take the tail of the female tuna - and I'm talking of the large female tuna whose mother city is Byzantium. — Mark Kurlansky

Venice manipulated markets by controlling production. In the late thirteenth century, wishing to raise the world market price, Venice had all saltworks in Crete destroyed and banned the local production of salt. — Mark Kurlansky

It is always easier to promote war than peace, easier to end the peace than end the war, because peace is fragile and war is durable. — Mark Kurlansky

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

A true gourmet - a judge - has the wisdom to know when to stop eating. — Mark Kurlansky

ONE GROUP OF Vikings remained in Iceland, becoming the Icelanders. A second group remained in the Faroe Islands. 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. Soon the Vikings had vanished. — Mark Kurlansky

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

The salt intake of Europeans, much of it in the form of salted fish, rose from forty grams a day per person in the sixteenth century to seventy grams in the eighteenth century. — Mark Kurlansky

The longer wars last, the less popular they become. — Mark Kurlansky

In 'The Republic' he [Plato] states that the enjoyment of food is not a true pleasure because the purpose of eating is to relieve pain - hunger. — Mark Kurlansky

Food is about agriculture, about ecology, about man's relationship with nature, about the climate, about nation-building, cultural struggles, friends and enemies, alliances, wars, religion. It is about memory and tradition and, at times, even about sex. — Mark Kurlansky

ONCE I STOOD on the bank of a rice paddy in rural Sichuan Province, and a lean and aging Chinese peasant, wearing a faded forty-year-old blue jacket issued by the Mao government in the early years of the Revolution, stood knee deep in water and apropos of absolutely nothing shouted defiantly at me, We Chinese invented many things! — Mark Kurlansky

A Wedding In Haiti is a great experience and its unaffected prose is as true a portrait of complex Haiti as you will find. — Mark Kurlansky

Rich and poor live together in equality. The same food and similar houses are shared by all; wherefore they cannot envy each other's hearths, and so they are free from the vices that rule the world. All your emulation centers on the saltworks; instead of ploughs and scythes, you work rollers [for salt production] whence comes all your gain. Upon your industry all other products depend for, although there may be someone who does not seek gold, there never yet lived the man who does not desire salt, which makes every food more savory. - Cassiodorus,A.D. 523. — Mark Kurlansky

The indigenous people of five continents were facing an intractable enemy from a sixth continent that was convinced that they had the right to steal the land on other — Mark Kurlansky

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. — Mark Kurlansky

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

The first pan-European peace organization was established in Geneva in 1830, but — Mark Kurlansky

When a peasant has a baby girl, the family puts up a vegetable every year and gives the jars to her when she's married. This — Mark Kurlansky

Nonviolence is more effective than violence, that violence does not work. — Mark Kurlansky

Both Jews and Muslims believe that salt protects against the evil eye. The Book of Ezekial mentions rubbing newborn infants with salt to protect them from evil. The practice in Europe of protecting newborns either by putting salt on their tongues or by submerging them in saltwater is thought to predate Christian baptism. In France, until the practice was abolished in 1408, children were salted until they were baptized. In parts of Europe, especially Holland, the practice was modified to placing salt in the cradle with the child. — Mark Kurlansky

One result of the tea boycott was that Americans very quickly became coffee drinkers. — Mark Kurlansky

Mennonites are so called because they followed Menno Simons, a sixteenth-century Dutch Catholic priest — Mark Kurlansky

On the one side were Confucians, inspired by Mencius, who, when asked how a state should raise profits, replied, "Why must Your Majesty use the word profit? All I am concerned with are the good and the right. If Your Majesty says, 'How can I profit my state?' your officials will say, 'How can I profit my family?' and officers and common people will say, 'How can I profit myself?' Once superiors and inferiors are competing for profit, the state will be in danger. — Mark Kurlansky

The Phoenicians are also credited with the first alphabet. Chinese and Egyptian languages used pictographs, drawings depicting objects or concepts. Babylonian, which became the international language in the Middle East, also — Mark Kurlansky

The only possible explanation for the absence of a proactive word to express nonviolence is that not only the political establishments but the cultural and intellectual establishments of all societies have viewed nonviolence as a marginal point of view, a fanciful rejection of one of society's key components, a repudiation of something important but not a serious force in itself. It is not an authentic concept but simply the abnegation of something else. It has been marginalized because it is one of the rare truly revolutionary ideas, an idea that seeks to completely change the nature of society, a threat to the established order. And it has always been treated as something profoundly dangerous. — Mark Kurlansky

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

softness overcomes hardness. — Mark Kurlansky

In times of war prices of the necessaries of life are generally very much increased, but the prices of labor of the poor do not usually rise. — Mark Kurlansky

It takes two years for the salt to reach the center of a wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. — Mark Kurlansky

Were it not for their aversion to pigs, the Egyptians would probably have invented ham, for they salt-cured meat and knew how to domesticate the pig. But Egyptian religious leadership pronounced pigs carriers of leprosy, made pig farmers social outcasts, and never depicted the animal on the walls of tombs. — Mark Kurlansky

Gen. de Gaulle is only concerned about history, and no jury can dictate the judgment of history. Georges Pompidou — Mark Kurlansky

At the time when Pope Pius VII had to leave Rome, which had been conquered by revolutionary French, the committee of the Chamber of Commerce in London was considering the herring fishery. One member of the committee observed that, since the Pope had been forced to leave Rome, Italy was probably going to become a Protestant country. "Heaven help us," cried another member. "What," responded the first, "would you be upset to see the number of good Protestants increase?" "No," the other answered, "it isn't that, but suppose there are no more Catholics, what shall we do with our herring?" - Alexandre Dumas, Le grand dictionnaire de cuisine, 1873 — Mark Kurlansky

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. To — Mark Kurlansky

At the height of their power in the fifteenth century, the Hanseatics were believed to have had at their command 40,000 vessels and 300,000 men. — Mark Kurlansky

In nineteenth-century Russia, sauerkraut was valued more than caviar, — Mark Kurlansky

What stronger denunciation of an agrarian society than the charge of bestiality? Even in modern times, when Basque peasants engage in the duel by insults known as xikito, the accusation of bestiality remains a classic attack. And though to most people, sex with a goat would seem sufficiently perverted, it was not even conceded that they had conventional goat sex. It was group sex, and the goat sometimes used an artificial phallus, with the intercourse sometimes vaginal and sometimes anal. According to some accounts, the goat would lift his tail so the women could kiss his posterior while he broke wind. The — Mark Kurlansky

Cherokee faction of fewer than 500 people in a nation of 17,000 who were agreeable to removal. — Mark Kurlansky

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

It would be folly to assume that an Indian Rockefeller would be better than an American Rockefeller. — Mark Kurlansky

A modern revolutionary group, explained Abbie Hoffman, headed for the television station, not the factory. — Mark Kurlansky

No one ever escapes Gloucester. Kids go off to college and settle somewhere else. But they always come back. If Gloucester is all you know, every place else seems a little phony. — Mark Kurlansky

In spite of muzzling the press, imprisoning thousands, and engaging in torture, kidnapping and murder, the Socialist government was still vulnerable to the accusation of being soft on Basques. — Mark Kurlansky

Chloride is essential for digestion and in respiration. Without sodium, which the body cannot manufacture, the body would be unable to transport nutrients or oxygen, transmit nerve impulses, or move muscles, including the heart. — Mark Kurlansky

It was the seventeenth-century English who gave corned beef its name - corns being any kind of small bits, in this case salt crystals. — Mark Kurlansky

Proteins unwind when exposed to heat, and they do the same when exposed to salt. So salting has an effect resembling cooking. — Mark Kurlansky

Fate likes to tease paranoids.' — Mark Kurlansky

Writing beautifully - calligraphy - was China's first graphic art form. Although elsewhere in the world people drew first and learned to write later, in China, the reverse was true. First you learned to write beautifully, and then you painted. After mastering those twin skills, you could move on to writing poetry, but many chose to remain just calligraphers, a highly appreciated art form in China. Another — Mark Kurlansky

Now, at peace, Jordan has few resources but is full of plans. Mohammed Noufal observed with a smile, All we need is Israel's technology, Egypt's workers, Turkey's water, and Saudi Arabia's oil, and I am sure we can build a paradise here. — Mark Kurlansky

The egg creams of Avenue A in New York and the root beer float ... are among the high points of American gastronomic inventiveness. — Mark Kurlansky

There is a dreamlike quality to the 1936 Basque government, the fulfillment of a historic longing that was to be crushed only nine months later in carnage the scale of which had never before been seen on earth. — Mark Kurlansky

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

If all poor people refused to fight, he argued, the rich would have no army and there would be no war. — Mark Kurlansky

General Motors, ITT, and Ford come most readily to mind as having plants protected by Hitler, — Mark Kurlansky

Judging foods without regard to price is a rich mans game, and yet poor people can be gourmets able to discern a good potato from a bad one. — Mark Kurlansky

ENEMIES OFTEN become mirror images of each other. — Mark Kurlansky

The name potash is derived from the process used for making potassium carbonate, cooking down water and wood ash in earthen pots. — Mark Kurlansky

At about this time the Asiatic wolf, a fierce predator that despite its small size would eat a human if it had the opportunity, came under human control because its friendly young cubs could be fed and trained. A dangerous adversary was turned into a dedicated helper - the dog. — Mark Kurlansky