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War is an evil thing but to submit to the dictation of other states is worse.... Freedom, if we hold fast to it, will ultimately restore our losses, but submission will mean permanent loss of all that we value.... To you who call yourselves men of peace, I say: You are not safe unless you have men of action on your side.

Thucydides

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Thucydides
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More quotes by Thucydides

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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.
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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.
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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.
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It is from the greatest dangers that the greatest glory is to be won.
Thucydides
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I could have wished that the reputations of many brave men were not to be imperilled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall according as he spoke well or ill. For it is hard to speak properly upon a subject where it is even difficult to convince your hearers that you are speaking the truth.
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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.
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The secret of freedom, courage.
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Amassing of wealth is an opportunity for good deeds, not hubris
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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.
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But the prize for courage will surely be awarded most justly to those who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger.
Thucydides
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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.
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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
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Those who have experienced good and bad luck many times have every reason to be skeptical of successes
Thucydides
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So little trouble do men take in the search after truth so readily do they accept whatever comes first to hand.
Thucydides
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The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage.
Thucydides
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Remember that this greatness was won by men with courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honor in action.
Thucydides
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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
Thucydides
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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
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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
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We secure our friends not by accepting favours but by doing them.
Thucydides