The more recently power has originated, the less it can remain stationary - first because those who created it have become accustomed to rapid further movement and because they are and will be innovators per se; secondly, because the forces aroused or subdued by them can be employed only through further acts.

Neither in the life of the individual nor in that of mankind is it desirable to know the future.

The whole life of Demosthenes... leaves the impression of a melancholy state of things, and of the brazen insolence of wickedness. A particularly striking idea of how things really were in Greece can be obtained from one feature of life - the sons who turned out badly.... the sons of gifted but arrogant fathers turned out merely arrogant, the grandsons hopeless; it is respect alone that sustains families and gives them traditions.

Only the fairy tale equates changelessness with happiness...Permanence means paralysis and death. Only, in movement, with all its pain, is life.

True universality does not consist in knowing much but in loving much.

Power is of its nature evil, whoever wields it.

There might be a fact of the greatest significance reported by Thucydides which will only be recognized as such a hundred years from now.