Quotations regarding Alfred

The topic of dead kings came up in afp recently, and I mentioned that my personal favourite king of Britain or any part thereof is Alfred the Great. This is largely on the strength of a couple of quotations from The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger (or rather, the cassette tape edition read by Derek Jacobi. I have not read the original printed book).

Alfred’s attitude to knowledge:

“His greatest inspiration had been to understand how knowledge liberates - that knowledge is power. ‘The saddest thing about any man is that he be ignorant’, he once said. ‘And the most exciting thing is that he knows.’“

Alfred’s laws against sexual harrassment:

“A man who fondled the breast of a free woman, uninvited, incurred a fine of five shillings, while throwing the woman down, though not actually violating her, cost ten shillings. Rape was six times more serious. The violation of a free woman demanded compensation of sixty shillings . . . payable, like all the other fines, directly to her.“

I am certainly not the first to post such things to a blog, but I decided to do so because it gives me a good excuse to begin a small series of posts on the theme of quotations. Another installment can be expected in under a week.