War is an evil thing; but to submit to the dictation of other states is worse.... Freedom, if we hold fast to it, will ultimately restore our losses, but submission will mean permanent loss of all that we value.... To you who call yourselves men of peace, I say: You are not safe unless you have men of action on your side.

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

Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved.

He who graduates the harshest school, succeeds.

Hope is an expensive commodity. It makes better sense to be prepared.

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.

What made the war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.