Thucydides Quotes
Top 86 wise famous quotes and sayings by Thucydides
Thucydides Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Thucydides on Wise Famous Quotes.
Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.
They whose minds are least sensitive to calamity, and whose hands are most quick to meet it, are the greatest men and the greatest communities.
We Greeks are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.
Wars spring from unseen and generally insignificant causes, the first outbreak being often but an explosion of anger.
When will there be justice in Athens? There will be justice in Athens when those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are.
For so remarkably perverse is the nature of man that he despises whoever courts him, and admires whoever will not bend before him.
I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.
In small moment of time, the climax of their lives, a culmination of glory, not of fear, were swept away from us.
It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions.
The longer a war lasts, the more things tend to depend on accidents. Neither you nor we can see into them: We have to abide their outcome in the dark.
Remember that this greatness was won by men with courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honor in action.
Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.
Those who have experienced good and bad luck many times have every reason to be skeptical of successes
Good deeds can be shortly stated but where wrong is done a wealth of language is needed to veil its deformity.
The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.
People get into the habit of entrusting the things they desire to wishful thinking, and subjecting things they don't desire to exhaustive thinking
He passes through life most securely who has least reason to reproach himself with complaisance toward his enemies.
Still hope leads men to venture; and no one ever yet put himself in peril without the inward conviction that he would succeed in his design.
The question is not so much whether they are guilty as whether we are making the right decision for ourselves.
What we should lament is not the loss of houses or of land, but the loss of men's lives. Men come first; the rest is the fruit of their labour.
Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can.
The Thracian people, like the bloodiest of the barbarians, being ever most murderous when it has nothing to fear.
So little trouble do men take in the search after truth; so readily do they accept whatever comes first to hand.
You shouldn't feel sorry for the lifestyle you haven't tasted, but for the one you are about to lose
Few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought.
What made the war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.
A man who has the knowledge but lacks the power clearly to express it is no better off than if he never had any ideas at all.
The State that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.
We should remember that one man is much the same as another, and that he is best who is trained in the severest school.
The sufferings that fate inflicts on us should be borne with patience, what enemies inflict with manly courage.
It is useless to attack a man who could not be controlled even if conquered, while failure would leave us in an even worse position.
Knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom, and the secret of freedom a brave heart, not idly to stand aside from the enemy's onset.
Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
It is the habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire
...when these matters are discussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel...
It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men.
An avowal of poverty is no disgrace to any man; to make no effort to escape it is indeed disgraceful.
It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disasters to discuss the matter.
If you have the power to put a stop to subjugation, yet look the other way while it happens, then you have done it yourselves,
We Greeks believe that a man who takes no part in public affairs is not merely lazy, but good for nothing
When night came on, the Macedonians and the barbarian crowd suddenly took fright in one of those mysterious panics to which great armies are liable
Concessions to adversaries only end in self reproach, and the more strictly they are avoided the greater will be the chance of security.
We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.
The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.
Justice will not come to Athens until those who are not injured are as indignant as those who are injured.
The peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learned to cultivate the olive and the vine.