Athens' biggest worry was the sheer recklessness of its own democratic government. A simple majority of the citizenry, urged on and incensed by clever demagogues, might capriciously send out military forces in unnecessary and exhausting adventures.

The peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learned to cultivate the olive and the vine.

There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another; but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school.

For they had learned that true safety was to be found in long previous training, and not in eloquent exhortations uttered when they were going into action.

In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.

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.

Boasting and bravado may exist in the breast even of the coward, if he is successful through a mere lucky hit; but a just contempt of an enemy can alone arise in those who feel that they are superior to their opponent by the prudence of their measures.