At some time in the ninth century one could have looked down the Seine and seen the prow of a Viking ship coming up the river. Looked at today in the… - Kenneth Clark

Those who wish, in the interest of morality, to reduce Leonardo, that inexhaustible source of creative power, to a neutral or sexless agency, have a strange idea of doing service to his reputation.

I wonder if a single thought that has helped forward the human spirit has ever been conceived or written down in an enormous room.

The Vikings were quartering the world; they set out from a base, and with unbelievable courage and ingenuity, they reached as far as Persia by the Volga and the Caspian Sea. Then they returned home with all their loot in these open ships, including coins from Samarkand and even a Chinese Buddha. The sheer technical skill of their journeys was a new achievement, and their spirit did contribute something very important to the Western world, because in the end, it was the spirit of Columbus.