Mark Kurlansky Cod Quotes & Sayings

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

A gourmet knows that the best part is not always the expensive part, and he will find that part, and then he will share it. A gourmet should want to share. — 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

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

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

Herzl had said that attracting the Jewish diaspora would be a slow process, but after a half century as a nation, according to the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, only 17 percent of American Jews have ever visited Israel. — 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

Even creative nonviolence can go unnoticed unless participants are attacked. — 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

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

There is a big difference between living in a society that hunts whales and living in one that views them. Nature is being reduced to precious demonstrations for entertainment and education, something far less natural than hunting. Are we headed for a world where nothing is left of nature but parks? Whales are mammals, and mammals do not lay a million eggs. We were forced to give up commercial hunting and to raise domestic mammals for meat, preserving the wild ones as best we could. It is harder to kill off fish than mammals. But after 1,000 years of hunting the Atlantic cod, we know that it can be done. — Mark Kurlansky

Modern people have seen too many chemicals and are ready to go back to eating dirt. — 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

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

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

the Poor Men of Lyons, — 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

Toward the end of the first century A.D., a Confucian government minister had them once more abolished, declaring, Government sale of salt means competing with subjects for profit. These are not measures fit for wise rulers. — 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

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

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 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

If ever there was a fish made to endure, it is the Atlantic cod ... But it has among its predators - man, an openmouthed species greedier than cod. — 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