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.

Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, he began at the moment that it broke out, believing that it would be a great war, and more memorable than any that had preceded it.

Knowledge without understanding is 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.

The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage.

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

Men's indignation, it seems, is more exited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior.