Top 140 Thucydides Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.”

— Thucydides

52. “There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another; but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school.”

— Thucydides

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

— Thucydides

54. “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

55. “When will there be justice in Athens? There will be justice in Athens when those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are.”

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

— Thucydides

59. “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

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

— Thucydides

65. “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

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

— Thucydides

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

— Thucydides

68. “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

69. “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

70. “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

71. “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

72. “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

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

— Thucydides

74. “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

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

— Thucydides

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

— Thucydides

77. “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

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

— Thucydides

79. “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

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

— Thucydides

81. “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

82. “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

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

— Thucydides

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

— Thucydides

85. “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

86. “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

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

— Thucydides

88. “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

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

— Thucydides

90. “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

91. “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

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

— Thucydides

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

— Thucydides

94. “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

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

— Thucydides

96. “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

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. “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

100. “The way that most men deal with traditions, even traditions of their own country, is to receive them all alike as they are delivered, without applying any critical test whatever.”

— Thucydides