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

If you give way, you will instantly have to meet some greater demand, as having been frightened into obedience in the first instance; while a firm refusal will make them clearly understand that they must treat you more as equals.

With reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report always being tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other.

Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils.

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.

So little trouble do men take in the search after truth; so readily do they accept whatever comes first to hand.

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