Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.

For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller cities to subjection.

You should punish in the same manner those who commit crimes with those who accuse falsely.

The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention.

The Peloponnesian War turns out to be no dry chronicle of abstract cause and effect. No, it is above all an intense, riveting, and timeless story of strong and weak men, of heroes and scoundrels and innocents too, all caught in the fateful circumstances of rebellion, plague, and war that always strip away the veneer of culture and show us for what we really are.

We secure our friends not by accepting favours but by doing them.

Wars spring from unseen and generally insignificant causes, the first outbreak being often but an explosion of anger.