Thucydides Quotes about War

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.

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

I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.

It must be thoroughly understood that war is a necessity, and that the more readily we accept it,the less will be the ardor of our opponents, and that out of the greatest dangers communities and individuals acquire the greatest glory.

The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.

It is useless to attack men who could not be controlled even if conquered, while failure would leave us in an even worse position.

It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disasters to discuss the matter.

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.

War is a matter not so much of arms as of money.

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

Peace is an armistice in a war that is continuously going on.

In peace and prosperity states and individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but war takes away the easy supply of daily wants and so proves a rough master that brings most men's characters to a level with their fortunes

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

By day certainly the combatants have a clearer notion, though even then by no means of all that takes place, no one knowing much of anything that does not does not go on in his own immediate neighborhood; but in a night engagement ( and this was the only one that occurred between great armies during the war) how could anyone know anything for certain?

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.