“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.”

Three of the gravest failings, want of sense, of courage, or of vigilance.

Amassing of wealth is an opportunity for good deeds, not hubris.

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.

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.

Few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought.

It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.

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.

Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and respect of self, in turn, is the chief element in courage.

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.

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

When tremendous dangers are involved, no one can be blamed for looking to his own interest.

Knowledge without understanding is useless.

Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.

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.

It is from the greatest dangers that the greatest glory is to be won.

We Greeks are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.

In England you’re skewered on the altar of pop culture if you become pretentious.

Americans shocked me by their behavior and their narrow-mindedness.

You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.

There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance.

They that are fated to be fools, have one consolation, that they are fated also to be ignorant of it.

Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel.

Violent people usually express their love of a thing by their hatred of its opposite.

I don’t say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.