The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
—L. P. Hartley

The man would be thrown onto his shredded back and nailed through the wrists to the crossbar. (Contrary to the familiar depictions, the flesh of the palms cannot support the weight of a man.)

When he is finally captured and his eyes are burned out, God gives him the strength for a 9/11-like suicide attack in which he implodes a large building, crushing the three thousand men and women who are worshipping inside it.

Positive illusions make people happier, more confident, and mentally healthier

The spectacles are a painful fit

The counterpart of too much memory on the part of victims is too little memory on the part of perpetrators

Roy Baumeister in his book Evil

German pacifism is not just symbolic: in 2003 half a million Germans marched to oppose the American-led invasion of Iraq.

The throne passed to Henry’s son Edward, then to Henry’s daughter Mary, and then to another daughter, Elizabeth. “Bloody Mary” did not get her nickname by putting tomato juice in her vodka but by having three hundred religious dissenters burned at the stake.

As for their vaunted treatment of the ladies, one knight woos a princess by pledging to rape the most beautiful woman he can find on her behalf; his rival promises to send her the heads of the knights he defeats in tournaments. Knights do protect ladies, but only to keep them from being abducted by other knights. According to Lancelot, “The customs of the Kingdom of Logres are such that if a lady or a maiden travels by herself, she fears no one. But if she travels in the company of a knight and another knight can win her in battle, the winner can take a lady or maiden in any way he desires without incurring shame or blame.” 39 Presumably that is not what most people today mean by the word chivalry.