Thucydides Quotes

96 Sourced Quotes

I think the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usaully goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of mind.

Thucydides
Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons; although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours.

Thucydides
The freaks of chance are not determinable by calculation.

Thucydides
I think, therefore, that we ought to take great numbers of hoplites, both from Athens and from our allies, and not merely from our subjects, but also any we may be able to get for love or money in the Peloponnesus, and great numbers also of archers and slingers, to oppose the Sicilian horse.

Thucydides
Concessions to adversaries only end in self reproach, and the more strictly they are avoided the greater will be the chance of security.

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

Thucydides
We hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that 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.

Thucydides
But the prize for courage will surely be awarded most justly to those who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger.

Thucydides
If [my history] should be judged useful by those enquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future…I shall be content.

Thucydides
If you give way, you will instantly have to meet some greater demand, as having been frightened into obedience in the first instance; while a firm refusal will make them clearly understand that they must treat you more as equals.

Thucydides
They have discovered that the length of time we have now been in commission has rotted our ships and wasted our crews, and that with the completeness of our crews and the soundness of the pristine efficiency of our navy has departed. For it is impossible for us to haul our ships ashore and dry them out because the enemy's vessels being as many or more than our own, we are constantly anticipating an attack.

Thucydides
Men make the city, and not walls or ships without men in them.

Thucydides
Fire signals of an attack were also raised toward Thebes, but the Plataeans in the city at once displayed a number of others, prepared beforehand for this very purpose, in order to render the enemy's signals unintelligible, and to prevent his friends from getting a true idea of what was happening and coming to his aid before their comrades who had gone out should have made good their escape and be in safety.

Thucydides
When men are once checked in what they consider their special excellence, their whole opinion of themselves suffers more than if they had not at first believed in their superiority, the unexpected shock to their pride causing them to give way more than their real strength warrants; and that is probably now the case with the Athenians.

Thucydides
Their swaying bodies reflected the agitation of their minds, and they suffered the worst agony of all, ever just within the reach of safety or just on the point of destruction.

Thucydides
For they had learned that true safety was to be found in long previous training, and not in eloquent exhortations uttered when they were going into action.

Thucydides
Self-control contains honour as a chief constituent, and honour bravery.

Thucydides
We know that there can never be any solid friendship between individuals, or union between communities that is worth the name, unless the parties be persuaded of each others honesty,

Thucydides
But what most oppressed them was that they had two wars at once, and has thus reached a pitch of frenzy which no one would have believed possible if he had heard of it before it had come to pass.

Thucydides
As for democracy, the men of sense among us knew what it was, and I perhaps as well as any, as I have more cause to complain of it; but there is nothing new to be said of a patent absurdity-meanwhile we did not think it safe to alter it under the pressure of your hostility.

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

Thucydides
The dead lay unburied, and each man as he recognized a friend among them shuddered with grief and horror; while the living whom they were leaving behind, wounded or sick, were to the living far more shocking than the dead, and more to be pitied than those who had perished.

Thucydides
For men naturally despise those who court them, but respect those who do not give way to them.

Thucydides
We must make up our minds to look for our protection not to legal terrors but to careful administration.

Thucydides
Hatred also is short lived; but that which makes the splendor of the present and the glory of the future remains forever unforgotten

Thucydides
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.

Thucydides
And the rarest dangers are those in which failure brings little loss and success the greatest advantage.

Thucydides
The fate of those of their neighbours who had already rebelled and had been subdued was no lesson to them; their own prosperity could not dissuade them from affronting danger; but blindly confident in the future, and full of hopes beyond their power though not beyond their ambition, they declared war and made their decision to prefer might to right, their attack being determined not by provocation but by the moment which seemed propitious. The truth is that great good fortune coming suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people insolent; in most cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of reason; and it is easier for them, one may say, to stave off adversity than to preserve prosperity.

Thucydides
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.

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

Thucydides