Thucydides quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Thucydides

Thucydides Famous Quotes & Sayings

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The strong do what they have to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.

Contempt for an assailant is best shown by bravery in action.

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.

A collision at sea can ruin your entire day.

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.

And where the rewards for merit are greatest, there are found the best citizens.

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.

Ignorance is bold, and knowledge is reserved

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

It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.

The whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men.

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.

Hope is an expensive commodity. It makes better sense to be prepared.

People get into the habit of entrusting the things they desire to wishful thinking, and subjecting things they don't desire to exhaustive thinking

The people made their recollections fit in with their sufferings

especially as they did not trust one another.

He passes through life most securely who has least reason to reproach himself with complaisance toward his enemies.

Three of the greatest failings, want of sense, of courage, or of vigilance.

Peace is an armistice in a war that is continuously going on.

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.

When tremendous dangers are involved, no one can be blamed for looking to his own interest.

Knowledge without understanding is useless.

The strength of an Army lies in strict discipline and undeviating obedience to its officers.

The question is not so much whether they are guilty as whether we are making the right decision for ourselves.

War is a violent teacher,

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.

Mankind apparently find it easier to drive away adversity than to retain prosperity.

Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can.

He who graduates the harshest school, succeeds.

The Thracian people, like the bloodiest of the barbarians, being ever most murderous when it has nothing to fear.

Full of hopes beyond their power though not beyond their ambition.

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.

Men naturally despise those who court them, but respect those who do not give way to them.

The secret of happiness is freedom.

I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire ...

a collision at sea will ruin your entire day

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.

Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men the most.

We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them.

In a word I claim that our city as a whole is an education to Greece.

Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved.

Now the only sure basis of an alliance is for each party to be equally afraid of the other

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.

Human nature is the one constant through human history. It is always there.

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.

War is a matter not so much of arms as of money.

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 from the greatest dangers that the greatest glory is to be won.

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

Amassing of wealth is an opportunity for good deeds, not hubris

...when these matters are discussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel...

You should punish in the same manner those who commit crimes with those who accuse falsely.

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.

History is Philosophy teaching by example.

I dread our own mistakes more than the enemy's intentions.

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.

The secret of freedom, courage ...

Speculation is carried on in safety, but, when it comes to action, fear causes failure.

Justice will not come to Athens until those who are not injured are as indignant as those who are injured.

Stories happen to those who tell them.

The peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learned to cultivate the olive and the vine.

Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.

My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the needs of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever.