The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody Quotes

“It's easy to see the faults in people, I know; and it's harder to see the good. Especially when the good isn't there.”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“He had also learned that there is no use murdering people; there are always so many left, and if you tried to murder them all you would never get anything else done.”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“You can't do much for the poor, as they are not in with the right people.”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“Egypt has been called the Gift of the Nile. Once every year the river overflows its banks, depositing a layer of rich alluvial soil on the parched ground. Then it recedes and soon the whole countryside, as far as the eye can reach, is covered with Egyptologists.”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“Either you like Henry VIII or you don't. He has been much criticized for beheading two of his wives. In a way, he has only himself to blame. Any man who beheads fwo of his wives musf expect a little talk. He shouldn't have done it, but you know how those things are. As a matter of fact, Henry merely let the law take its course, but some people feel that a really thoughtful husband would have done something about it,”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“The Bayeaux Tapestry is accepted as an authority on many details of life and fhe fine points of history in the eleventh century. For instance, the horses in those days had green legs, blue bodies, yellow manes, and red heads, while the people were all double-jointed and quite different from what we generally think of as human beings,”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“Queen Elizabeth was rather a flirt all her life. She finally developed a bad habit of boxing her partners' ears and shouting "god's death, I'll have thy head!" This discouraged some of her more sensitive partners,”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“Hatshepsut has been called the first great woman of history. She simply appointed herself King of Egypt and that was all there was to it. To show her subjects that she was properly qualified, Hatshepsut set up many statues and portraits representing herself as a regular male Pharaoh with a beard. This fooled nobody, but it was legal proof because she was the law, and she was the law because she said she was. Hatshepsut was quite a surprise to the Egyptians, who had gone along thinking that it's a man's world. It is, with certain exceptions.”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“Hatshepsut has been called the first great woman of history. She simply appointed herself King of Egypt and that was all there was to it. To show her subjects that she was properly qualified, Hatshepsut set up many statues and portraits representing herself as a regular male Pharaoh with a beard. This fooled nobody, but it was legal proof because shew as the law, and she was the law because she said she was. Hatshepsut was quite a surprise to the Egyptians, who had gone along thinking that it's a man's world. It is, with certain exceptions.”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“اصولا بچه های طبیعی در ایتالیای عصر رنسانس زیاد بودند و بعضی از آنها کارهای بزرگی انجام دادند. علتش این بود که در عصر رنسانس مردم ناگهان متوجه شدند که امکانات زندگی کردن خیلی بیش از آن است که خیال می کرده اند؛ و اگر آدم آن طور که دلش می خواهد زندگی کند، اتفاق خاصی نمی افتد. به همین جهت گروه کثیری از مردم آن طور که دلشان می خواست زندگی کردند؛ در نتیجه بچه های طبیعی مثل شقایق که در صحرا می روید در سراسر ایتالیا پدیدار شدند. این تمایل مردم ایتالیا در آن دوره به زندگی دلخواه همان چیزی است که به (( روح رنسانس)) معروف است.”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of more different kinds than any other man of his time.2 He did this in order to impress Greek culture upon them. Alexander was not strictly a Greek and he was not cultured, but that was his story, and who am I to deny it?3”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

“The Romans were a nation of homebodies. when they bestirred themselves at all, it was only to go and kill some other Italians.”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“There was a minor Pharaoh between Khufu and Khafre. All we know about him positively is his name, which was Radedef, or Tetf-Re, or Didoufri, or Ratiosis.”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“In some respects, Nero was ahead of his time. He boiled his drinking water to remove the impurities and cooled it with unsanitary ice to put them back in. He renamed the month of April after himself, calling it Neroneus, but the idea never caught on because April is not Neroneus and there is no use pretending that it is. During his reign of fourteen years, the outlying provinces are said to have prospered. They were farther away.”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“Egyptologists say they have no idea what Khufu was doing when he was not building pyramids, since he left no inscriptions describing his daily activities, and they would give a good deal to know. Then they say he had six wives and a harem full of concubines. They do not seem to make the connection, but you get it and I get it. We do not need any hieroglyphics to inform us that Khufu dropped around occasionally to see how things were getting along and to tell the ladies how many cubic yards of limestone he had laid that afternoon”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled

“In modern times much thought has been devoted to the methods used in constructing the Great Pyramid. Egyptologists marvel that such a task could have been accomplished before they were born, and our engineers say they would not have undertaken it with only some old copper tools and a complete lack of stainless steel machinery. It hardly seems possible that the ancient Egyptians were as smart as these experts. Still, they went right ahead and did it, and you can draw your own conclusions. The fact is that building a pyramid is fairly easy, aside from the lifting. You just pile up stones in receding layers, placing one layer carefully upon another, and pretty soon you have a pyramid. You can’t help it.19 And once it is up, it stays there. Why wouldn’t it? In other words, it is not the nature of a pyramid to fall down, and that explains why the Great Pyramid is still standing after all these years.”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

“The Bayeux Tapestry is accepted as an authority on many details of life and the fine points of history in the eleventh century. For instance, the horses in those days had green legs, blue bodies, yellow manes, and red heads, while the people were all double-jointed and quite different from what we generally think of as human beings.”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

“During part of her childhood, Elizabeth was illegitimate. In 1534, Parliament ruled that it was treason to believe her illegitimate. In 1536, it was treason to believe her legitimate. Signals were changed again in 1543, and again in 1553. After that you could believe anything.”
― Will Cuppy, The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled