Now the only sure basis of an alliance is for each party to be equally afraid of the other.
THUCYDIDESIt is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disasters to discuss the matter.
More Thucydides Quotes
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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.
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War is a matter not so much of arms as of money.
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Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved.
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We secure our friends not by accepting favours but by doing them.
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Remember that this greatness was won by men with courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honor in action.
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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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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.
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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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Men’s indignation, it seems, is more exited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior.
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It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions.
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Three of the gravest failings, want of sense, of courage, or of vigilance.
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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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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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The strength of an Army lies in strict discipline and undeviating obedience to its officers.
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Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first.
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Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.
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Men do not rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first blow to prevent the attack being made.
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I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire.
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knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom, and the secret of freedom a brave heart, not idly to stand aside from the enemy’s onset.
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It is from the greatest dangers that the greatest glory is to be won.
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Stories happen to those who tell them.
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It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.
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Peace is an armistice in a war that is continuously going on.
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You shouldn’t feel sorry for the lifestyle you haven’t tasted, but for the one you are about to lose.
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He who graduates the harshest school, succeeds.
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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.
THUCYDIDES