Thucydides
Thucydides
Thucydideswas an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" because of his strict standards of evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work...
NationalityGreek
ProfessionHistorian
courage freedom happiness secret
The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.
i-miss-you missing-you long-distance-relationship
As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delight of presence best known by the torments of absence.
positive leadership memorial-day
The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.
office democracy failing
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.
self-esteem self-respect self-control
Self-control is the chief element in self-respect and self-respect is the chief element in courage.
friendship favors accepting
We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them.
military warrior fighting
The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.
country successful men
A private man, however successful in his own dealing, if his country perish is involved in her destruction; but if he be an unprosperous citizen of a prosperous city, he is much more likely to recover. Seeing, then, that States can bear the misfortunes of individuals, but individuals cannot bear the misfortunes of States, let us all stand by our country.
commodity be-prepared prepared
Hope is an expensive commodity. It makes better sense to be prepared.
glory danger
It is from the greatest dangers that the greatest glory is to be won.
powerful justice pressure
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.
strength strong peace
The strong do what they have to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.
memories eye hands
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 labor 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.
science men logic
When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and reason.