The peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learned to cultivate the olive and the vine.
THUCYDIDESRight, 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.
More Thucydides Quotes
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In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.
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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.
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Mankind apparently find it easier to drive away adversity than to retain prosperity.
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The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage.
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He passes through life most securely who has least reason to reproach himself with complaisance toward his enemies.
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And it is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best.
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When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and reason.
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When one is deprived of ones liberty, one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the shackles on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it.
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The strong do what they have to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.
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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
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When tremendous dangers are involved, no one can be blamed for looking to his own interest.
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War is a matter not so much of arms as of money.
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Now the only sure basis of an alliance is for each party to be equally afraid of the other.
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Human nature is the one constant through human history. It is always there.
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For so remarkably perverse is the nature of man that he despises whoever courts him, and admires whoever will not bend before him.
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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.
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The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention.
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I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire.
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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.
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It is from the greatest dangers that the greatest glory is to be won.
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Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and respect of self, in turn, is the chief element in courage.
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The Thracian people, like the bloodiest of the barbarians, being ever most murderous when it has nothing to fear.
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And where the rewards for merit are greatest, there are found the best citizens.
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It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.
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Contempt for an assailant is best shown by bravery in action.
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The strength of an Army lies in strict discipline and undeviating obedience to its officers.
THUCYDIDES