Wars spring from unseen and generally insignificant causes, the first outbreak being often but an explosion of anger.
THUCYDIDESKnowledge without understanding is useless.
More Thucydides Quotes
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I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.
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It 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.
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People get into the habit of entrusting the things they desire to wishful thinking, and subjecting things they don’t desire to exhaustive thinking.
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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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Hope, danger’s comforter.
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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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I dread our own mistakes more than the enemy’s intentions.
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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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It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.
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When tremendous dangers are involved, no one can be blamed for looking to his own interest.
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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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We must remember that one man is much the same as another, and that he is best who is trained in the severest school.
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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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What made the war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.
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The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.
THUCYDIDES