The Spartans do not ask how many the enemies are but where they are.

The Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they. — Plutarch Sayings of the Spartans

King Agis said, "The Lacedæmonians are not wont to ask how many, but where the enemy are."

Cowards do not count in battle; they are there, but not in it.

Among the ways the Spartans differ from other peoples is this. When an ally in distress applies to them for aid, they alone dispatch neither troops nor treasure but a solitary commander, a general. This officer alone, assuming charge of the beleagured forces, is sufficiant, they feel, to turn affairs about and produce victory. This as the world knows is what happened at Syracuse.

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.

In the dictionary of Satyagraha, there is no enemy.

When the time comes, they won't ask what kind of a Jew you are.

An army of one answers to none.

The Spartans weren't to be led and ordered around like precious servants. Besides, they wouldn't have thought a pan-Hellenic expedition without a Spartan king in command was to be taken very seriously. Of course, then, "except the Lacedaimonians." <p> That's certainly one point of view. Quite understandable.

I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau If birds confabulate or no.

War does not call for judgment, I said, merely survival.

The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.

those who escape hell
however
never talk about
it
and nothing much
bothers them
after
that.