Top 140 Thucydides Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “The longer a war lasts, the more things tend to depend on accidents. Neither you nor we can see into them: We have to abide their outcome in the dark.”

— Thucydides

102. “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

103. “I blame not those who wish to rule, but those who are willing to serve. The same human nature which is always ready to domineer over the subservient, bids us defend ourselves against the aggressor.”

— Thucydides

104. “So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.”

— Thucydides

105. “We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. As for poverty, no one need to be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it. -p147.”

— Thucydides

106. “What we should lament is not the loss of houses or of land, but the loss of men’s lives. Men come first; the rest is the fruit of their labour.”

— Thucydides

107. “If one has a great aim to pursue, this burden of envy must be accepted, and it is wise to accept it. -p162.”

— Thucydides

108. “Difficulty of subsistence made the invaders reduce the numbers of the army to a point at which it might live on the country during the prosecution of the war.”

— Thucydides

109. “Democracy is incapable of empire.”

— Thucydides

110. “Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquillity for an apparent temporary advantage.”

— Thucydides

111. “Events of future history will be of the same nature – or nearly so – as the history of the past, so long as men are men.”

— Thucydides

112. “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.”

— Thucydides

113. “Wealth to us is not mere material for vainglory but an opportunity for achievement; and poverty we think it no disgrace to acknowledge but a real degredation to make no effort to overcome.”

— Thucydides

114. “The people made their recollections fit in with their sufferings.”

— Thucydides

115. “As for democracy, the men of sense among us knew what it was, and I perhaps as well as any, as I have more cause to complain of it; but there is nothing new to be said of a patent absurdity-meanwhile we did not think it safe to alter it under the pressure of your hostility.”

— Thucydides

116. “My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the needs of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever.”

— Thucydides

117. “He passes through life most securely who has least reason to reproach himself with complaisance toward his enemies.”

— Thucydides

118. “Indeed men too often take upon themselves in the prosecution of their revenge to set the example of doing away with those general laws to which all can look for salvation in adversity, instead of allowing them to subsist against the day of danger when their aid may be required.”

— Thucydides

119. “Hope, danger’s comforter.”

— Thucydides

120. “In times of peace and prosperity cities and individuals alike follow higher standards, because they are not forced into a situation where they have to do what they do not want to do. But war is a stern teacher; in depriving them of the power of easily satisfying their daily wants, it brings most people’s minds down to the level of their actual circumstances.”

— Thucydides

121. “For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller cities to subjection.”

— Thucydides

122. “I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire...”

— Thucydides

123. “Mankind apparently find it easier to drive away adversity than to retain prosperity.”

— Thucydides

124. “The superior gratification derived from the use and contemplation of costly and supposedly beautiful products is, commonly, in great measure a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.”

— Thucydides

125. “Identity of interests is the surest of bonds whether between states or individuals.”

— Thucydides

126. “At times Thucydides may be clearly mistaken in both detail and interpretation, but the extent of his accuracy and analysis astounds in a world where travel was difficult, written sources rarely available, and the physical obstacles to the writing of history substantial.”

— Thucydides

127. “The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, 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.”

— Thucydides

128. “To feel pity, to be carried away by the pleasure of hearing a clever argument, to listen to the claims of decency are three things that are entirely against the interests of an imperial power.”

— Thucydides

129. “Yet we know that in war fortune sometimes makes the odds more level than could be expected from the difference in numbers of the two sides. And if we surrender, then all our hope is lost at once, whereas, so long as we remain in action, there is still a hope that we may yet stand upright.”

— Thucydides

130. “We all look with distaste on people who arrogantly pretend to a reputation to which they are not entitled; but equally to be condemned are those who, through lack of moral fibre, fail to live up to the reputation which is theirs already.”

— Thucydides

131. “What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action.”

— Thucydides

132. “Anyone who maintains that we have nothing useful to learn from listening to speeches either lacks sense or has a secret agenda at stake.” – Diodotus.”

— Thucydides

133. “For famous men have the whole earth as their memorial: it is not only the inscriptions on their graves in their own country that mark them out; no, in foreign lands also, not in any visible form but in people’s hearts, their memory abides and grows. It is for you to try to be like them. Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.”

— Thucydides

134. “Our city is open to the world, and we have no periodical deportations in order to prevent people observing or finding out secret which might be of military advantage to the enemy. This is because we rely, not on secret weapons, but on our own real courage and loyalty. -146.”

— Thucydides

135. “People are inclined to accept all stories of ancient times in an uncritical way – even when these stories concern their own native countries.”

— Thucydides

136. “They marched a good way apart from each other, that the clashing of their arms might not betray them; and they were lightly equipped, having the right foot bare that they might be less liable to slip in the mud.”

— Thucydides

137. “Not courage alone, therefore, but an actual sense of your superiority should animate you as you go forward against the enemy. Confidence, out of a mixture of ignorance and good luck, can be felt even by cowards; but this sense of superiority comes only to those who, like us, have real reasons for knowing that they are better placed than their opponents. And when the chances on both sides are equal, it is intelligence that confirms courage.”

— Thucydides

138. “Capital, it must be remembered, maintains a war more than forced contributions. Farmers.”

— Thucydides

139. “The richest soils were always most subject to this change of masters;.”

— Thucydides

140. “Mankind are tolerant of the praises of others as long as each hearer thinks that he can do as well or nearly as well himself, but, when the speaker rises above him, jealousy is aroused and he begins to be incredulous.”

— Thucydides

141. “Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, he began at the moment that it broke out, believing that it would be a great war, and more memorable than any that had preceded it.”

— Thucydides

142. “It was indeed a strange alteration in the ordinary run of things for Athenians to be fighting a battle on land – and Spartan land too – against Spartans attacking from the sea, and for Spartans to be trying to make a naval landing on their own shores, now hostile to them, against Athenian opposition. For at this time Sparta chiefly prided herself on being a land power with an unrivalled army and Athens on being a sea power with the greatest navy in existence.”

— Thucydides

143. “For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller towns to subjection. And it was at a somewhat later stage of this development that they went on the expedition against Troy.”

— Thucydides

144. “Again, wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing simply for themselves, of looking solely to their personal comfort and family aggrandizement, made safety the great aim of their policy, and prevented anything great proceeding from them; though they would each have their affairs with their immediate neighbors.”

— Thucydides

145. “In the final analysis, what stands out about Thucydides is not his weaknesses but his strengths as a historian. We note his omissions, but no account of the Peloponnesian War or of fifth-century Greece in general is more complete. Some scholars worry over his cut-and-dried heroes and villains. But is there much evidence to suggest that these assessments were fundamentally wrong? Others argue that his speeches are biased distortions, but no one can prove that any are outright fabrications.”

— Thucydides

146. “Besides, I know the Athenian character from experience: you like to be told pleasant news, but if things do not turn out in the way you have been led to expect, then you blame your informants afterwards. I therefore thought it safer to let you know the truth.”

— Thucydides

147. “I am the same as I was, and do not alter; it is you who have changed. What has happened is this: you took my advice when you were still untouched by misfortune, and repented of your action when things went badly with you; it is because your own resolution is weak that my policy appears to you to be mistaken.”

— Thucydides

148. “Meanwhile the party opposed to the traitors proved numerous enough to prevent the gates being immediately thrown open, and in concert with Eucles, the general, who had come from Athens to defend the place, sent to the other commander in Thrace, Thucydides, son of Olorus, the author of this history, who was at the isle of Thasos, a Parian colony, half a day’s sail from Amphipolis, to tell him to come to their relief.”

— Thucydides