Thucydides
Thucydides
Thucydideswas an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" because of his strict standards of evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work...
NationalityGreek
ProfessionHistorian
long desire use
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
war men useless
It is useless to attack men who could not be controlled even if conquered, while failure would leave us in an even worse position...
beautiful names use
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.
understanding useless
Knowledge without understanding is useless.
men liberty use
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.
best man
We should remember that one man is much the same as another, and that he is best who is trained in the severest school.
despise men naturally respect
Men naturally despise those who court them, but respect those who do not give way to them.
injured until
Justice will not come to Athens until those who are not injured are as indignant as those who are injured.
cheated compelled excited legal looks men second violent wrong
Men's indignation, it seems, is more excited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior.
freedom happiness secret
The secret to happiness is freedom... And the secret to freedom is courage.
i-miss-you missing-you long-distance-relationship
As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delight of presence best known by the torments of absence.
danger interest involved
When tremendous dangers are involved, no one can be blamed for looking to his own interest.
people barbarians
the Thracian people, like the bloodiest of the barbarians, being ever most murderous when it has nothing to fear.
war mean army
By day certainly the combatants have a clearer notion, though even then by no means of all that takes place, no one knowing much of anything that does not does not go on in his own immediate neighborhood; but in a night engagement ( and this was the only one that occurred between great armies during the war) how could anyone know anything for certain?