Top 140 Thucydides Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Stories happen to those who tell them.”

— Thucydides

52. “An avowal of poverty is no disgrace to any man; to make no effort to escape it is indeed disgraceful.”

— Thucydides

53. “The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.”

— Thucydides

54. “War is a matter not so much of arms as of money.”

— Thucydides

55. “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.”

— Thucydides

56. “The sufferings that fate inflicts on us should be borne with patience, what enemies inflict with manly courage.”

— Thucydides

57. “He who graduates the harshest school, succeeds.”

— Thucydides

58. “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.”

— Thucydides

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

— Thucydides

60. “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.”

— Thucydides

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

— Thucydides

62. “People get into the habit of entrusting the things they desire to wishful thinking, and subjecting things they don’t desire to exhaustive thinking.”

— Thucydides

63. “In a word I claim that our city as a whole is an education to Greece.”

— Thucydides

64. “You know and we know, as practical men that the question of justice arises only between parties equal in strength and that the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

— Thucydides

65. “Friendship or enmity is everywhere an affair of time and circumstance.”

— Thucydides

66. “What I fear is not the enemy’s strategy, but our own mistakes.”

— Thucydides

67. “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.”

— Thucydides

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

— Thucydides

69. “In peace and prosperity states and individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but war takes away the easy supply of daily wants and so proves a rough master that brings most men’s characters to a level with their fortunes.”

— Thucydides

70. “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.”

— Thucydides

71. “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.”

— Thucydides

72. “For we both alike know that into the discussion of human affairs the question of justice enters only where the pressure of necessity is equal, and that the powerful exact what they can, and the weak grant what they must.”

— Thucydides

73. “They are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who, having the clearest sense of both the pains and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from danger.”

— Thucydides

74. “Those who have experienced good and bad luck many times have every reason to be skeptical of successes.”

— Thucydides

75. “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

76. “Society had become divided into two ideologically hostile camps, and each side viewed the other with suspicion.”

— Thucydides

77. “Contempt for an assailant is best shown by bravery in action.”

— Thucydides

78. “The cause of all this was the pursuit of power driven by greed and ambition, leading in turn to the passions of the party rivalries thus established. The dominant men on each side in the various cities employed fine-sounding terms, claiming espousal either of democratic rights for all or of a conservative aristocracy, but the public whose interests they professed to serve were in fact their ultimate prize.”

— Thucydides

79. “The Athenians were the first to lay aside their weapons, and to adopt an easier and more luxurious mode of life;.”

— Thucydides

80. “Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses.”

— Thucydides

81. “For men naturally despise those who court them, but respect those who do not give way to them.”

— Thucydides

82. “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.”

— Thucydides

83. “For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.”

— Thucydides

84. “And where the rewards for merit are greatest, there are found the best citizens.”

— Thucydides

85. “You should punish in the same manner those who commit crimes with those who accuse falsely.”

— Thucydides

86. “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.”

— Thucydides

87. “A man who has the knowledge but lacks the power clearly to express it is no better off than if he never had any ideas at all.”

— Thucydides

88. “We must not disguise from ourselves that we go to found a city among strangers and enemies, and he who undertakes such an enterprise should be prepared to become master of the country the first day he lands, or failing in this find everything hostile to him.”

— Thucydides

89. “In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours.”

— Thucydides

90. “Civil war brought many hardships to the cities, such as happen and will always happen as long as human nature is the same, although they may be more or less violent or take different forms, depending on the circumstances in each case.”

— Thucydides

91. “Full of hopes beyond their power though not beyond their ambition.”

— Thucydides

92. “Men do not rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first blow to prevent the attack being made.”

— Thucydides

93. “Three of the greatest failings, want of sense, of courage, or of vigilance.”

— Thucydides

94. “I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.”

— Thucydides

95. “Boasting and bravado may exist in the breast even of the coward, if he is successful through a mere lucky hit; but a just contempt of an enemy can alone arise in those who feel that they are superior to their opponent by the prudence of their measures.”

— Thucydides

96. “Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go.”

— Thucydides

97. “The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest;.”

— Thucydides

98. “The whole of Hellas used once to carry arms, their habitations being unprotected and their communication with each other unsafe; indeed, to wear arms was as much a part of everyday life with them as with the barbarians.”

— Thucydides

99. “However well off a man may be in his private life, he will still be involved in the general ruin if his country is destroyed; whereas, so long as the state itself is secure, individuals have a much greater chance of recovering from their private misfortunes.”

— Thucydides

100. “Goodwill shown by the party that is asking for help does not mean security for the prospective ally. What is looked for is a positive preponderance of power in action.”

— Thucydides