Thucydides Quotes

Men do not rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first blow to prevent the attack being made.

People are inclined to accept all stories of ancient times in an uncritical way – even when these stories concern their own native countries.

Those who do wrong to a neighbor when there is no reason to do so are the ones who persevere to the point of destroying him since they see the danger involved in allowing their enemy to survive.

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

The Spartans meanwhile, man to man, and with their war songs in the ranks, exhorted each brave comrade to remember what he had learned before; well aware that the long training of action was of more use for saving lives than any brief verbal exhortation, though ever so well delivered.

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries.

(Athenian embassy:) Realise, while there is time, the inscrutable nature of war; and how when protracted it generally ends in becoming a mere matter of chance, over which neither of us can have any control, the event being equally unknown and equally hazardous to both.

The misfortune is that in their hurry to go to war, men begin with blows, and when a reverse comes upon them, then have recourse to words.

(Book 1 Chapter 78.1-3)

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

We all look with distaste on people who arrogantly pretend to a reputation to which they are not entitled; but equally to be condemned are those who, through lack of moral fibre, fail to live up to the reputation which is theirs already.

(Corinthian:) And if we allow ourselves to be divided or are not united against them (Athenians) heart and soul — the whole confederacy and every nation and city in it — they will easily overpower us. It may seem a hard saying, but you may be sure that defeat means nothing but downright slavery,

and the bare mention of such a possibility is a disgrace to the Peloponnese: — shall so many states suffer at the hands of one? Men will say, some that we deserve our fate, others that we are too cowardly to resist: and we shall seem a degenerate race. For our fathers were the liberators of Hellas,but we cannot secure even our own liberty; and while we make a point of overthrowing the rule of a single man in this or that city, we allow a city which is a tyrant to be set up in the midst of us.

(Book 1 Chapter 122.2-3)

the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Think, too, of the great part that is played by the unpredictable in war: think of it now, before you are actually comitted to war. 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. And when people are entering upon a war they do things the wrong way round. Action comes first, and it is only when they have already suffered that they begin to think.

"For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your examples, and, esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness, do not weigh too nicely the perils of war."

[Funeral Oration of Pericles]

But here, as on so many other occasions, the Lacedaemonians proved the most convenient people in the world for the Athenians to be at war with.

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.