Thucydides Short Quotes

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

Thucydides
They stood where they stood by the power of the sword.

Thucydides
The freaks of chance are not determinable by calculation.

Thucydides
Here we bless your simplicity but do not envy your folly.

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

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

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

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

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

Thucydides
The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage.

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

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

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

Thucydides
They possess most gold and silver, by which war, like everything else, flourishes.

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

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

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

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

Thucydides
He who voluntarily confronts tremendous odds must have very great internal resources to draw upon.

Thucydides
The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.

Thucydides
Great is the glory of the woman who occasions the least talk among men, whether of praise or of blame.

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

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

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

Thucydides
So little trouble do men take in the search after truth; so readily do they accept whatever comes first to hand.

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

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

Thucydides
So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.

Thucydides
Right or community of blood was not the bond of union between them, so much as interest or compulsion as the case may be.

Thucydides
It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disaster to discuss the matter.

Thucydides