215 Quotes by Thucydides

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.