Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. — Plutarch
At Athens, wise men propose, and fools dispose. — Alcuin
...one Greek city state had a fundamental law: anyone proposing revisions to the constitution did so with a noose around his neck. If his proposal lost he was instantly hanged. — Aristotle
We need money, for sure, Athenians, and without money nothing can be done that ought to be done. — Demosthenes
It is not I who have lost the Athenians, but the Athenians who have lost me. — Anaxagoras
Let there be light! Said Liberty , And like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose! — Percy Bysshe Shelley
Socrates, indeed, when he was asked of what country he called himself, said, "Of the world"; for he considered himself an inhabitant and a citizen of the whole world. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
Short Athenian Quotes
We Athenians hold that it is not poverty that is disgraceful but the failure to struggle against it. — Pericles
The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable. — Thucydides
Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob. — James Madison
Athenian men, I respect and love you, but I shall obey the god rather than you. — Plato
I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy. — Aristotle
Athenian Image Quotes
Athens Quotes
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As the best gem upon her zone. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art. — Benjamin Disraeli
No city in the world, not even Athens or Rome, ever played as great a role in the life of a nation for so long a time, as Jerusalem has done in the life of the Jewish people. — David Ben-Gurion
When will there be justice in Athens? There will be justice in Athens when those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are. — Thucydides
When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. — Edith Hamilton
I am not driven by any bitterness by what happened in Athens. I learnt a lot of lessons from it and probably came through it a stronger person in the end. There have been a lot of near misses, and that's taught me to keep persevering and that there is a chance it can come right. — Paula Radcliffe
Athens' biggest worry was the sheer recklessness of its own democratic government. A simple majority of the citizenry, urged on and incensed by clever demagogues, might capriciously send out military forces in unnecessary and exhausting adventures. — Thucydides
Our minds can go no further. The human imagination is capable of no further expression of beauty than the carved owl of Athene, the archaic, marble serpent, the arrogant selfish head of the Acropolis Apollo. — Hilda Doolittle
How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens. — Alexander The Great
So far has Athens left the rest of mankind behind in thought and expression that her pupils have become the teachers of the world, and she has made the name of Hellas distinctive no longer of race but of intellect, and the title of Hellene a badge of education rather than of common descent. — Isocrates
Ancient Greece Quotes
Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie. — Steven Pressfield
The spirit of Greece, passing through and ascending above the world, hath so animated universal nature, that the very rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilds burst forth with it. — Walter Savage Landor
He is the richest who is content with the least. — Socrates
The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads — in the end — to the best within us. — Jesse Owens
Nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentlemen. — George Bernard Shaw
In many ways we are all sons and daughters of ancient Greece. — Nia Vardalos
We are living in the era of the busybody. In ancient Greece, if a person wanted guidance, it involved a long, arduous expensive journey to consult the oracle at Delphi. Today, if you want guidance, all you have to do is unplug your ears. — Margo Kaufman
And so, inevitably, one returns to the centre of Western culture, Greece, and we have never, in any sense, lost our ties with the architectural concepts that this country's ancient civilization explored and demonstrated, nor with the political and social freedom that lay behind them. — Stephen Gardiner
Ancient of days! august Athena! where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone--glimmering through the dream of things that were; First in the race that led to glory's goal, They won, and pass'd away--Is this the whole? — Lord Byron
I judge wisely...as if nothin ever surprise me,
Loungin, between two pillars of ivory.
I'm lively, my dome piece is like buildin stones in Greece.
My poems are deep, from ancient thrones I speak. — Killah Priest
Ancient Greek Quotes
What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. — Pericles
I have a high art, I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me. — Archilochus
Sex and sleep alone make me conscious that I am mortal. — Alexander The Great
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners. — Vladimir Lenin
As the ancient Greeks replaced myth-based explanations with mechanistic models of the Solar System, their emphasis shifted from asking why to asking how. — Max Tegmark
The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence. — John F. Kennedy
We look at the ancient Greeks with their gods on a mountain top throwing lightning bolts and say, 'Those ancient Greeks. They were so silly. So primitive and naive. Not like our religions. We have burning bushes talking to people and guys walking on water. We're ...sophisticated.' — Paul Provenza
Chaos does not mean total disorder. Chaos means a multiplicity of possibilities. Chaos is from the ancient Greek words that means a thing that is birthed from the void. And it was about that which is possible, not about disorder. — Jok Church
Few men have the natural strength to honor a friend's success without envy. — Aeschylus
The Athenians regularly maintained a number of degraded and useless beings at the public expense; and when any calamity, such as plague, drought, or famine, befell the city, they sacrificed two of these outcast scapegoats. — James G. Frazer
Alcibiades had a very handsome dog, that cost him seven thousand drachmas; and he cut off his tail, "that," said he, "the Athenians may have this story to tell of me, and may concern themselves no further with me. — Plutarch
Mars, when guilty of homicide, and set free from the charge of murder by the Athenians through favour, lest he should appear to be too fierce and savage, committed adultery with Venus. — Lactantius
In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob. — Alexander Hamilton
An Athenian citizen does not neglect his state because he takes care of his own household; even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We do not regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs as harmless. We do not say that such a man 'minds his own business'. Rather we say he has no business here at all. — Pericles
The greatest and truest models for all oratorsis Demosthenes. One who has not studied deeply and constantly all the great speeches of the great Athenian, is not prepared to speak in public. Only as the constant companion of Demosthenes, Burke, Fox, Canning and Webster, can we hope to become orators. — Woodrow Wilson
Men keep their agreements when it is an advantage to both parties not to break them; and I shall so frame my laws that it will be evident to the Athenians that it will be for their interest to observe them. — Solon
To awaken a man who is deceived as to his own merit is to do him as bad a turn as that done to the Athenian madman who was happy in believing that all the ships touching at the port belonged to him. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld
Eutrapelia . "A happy and gracious flexibility," Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians...lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners. — Matthew Arnold
What I am arguing, in effect, is that the full democratic system of the second half of the fifth century B.C. would not have been introduced had there been no Athenian empire. — Moses Finley
We have the ability to be the Athens of modern times as opposed to the militaristic Sparta. I remind you that the Athenians wrote poetry. The Spartans did not. — Rita Mae Brown
The Athenians are right to accept advice from anyone, since it is incumbent on everyone to share in that sort of excellence, or else there can be no city at all. — Protagoras
An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character, and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy. — Thucydides
Imperialism was genuinely popular among Athenians who would expect to share in its profits, even if only indirectly and collectively, and not to have to bear its burdens. — J. M. Roberts
Imperialism was genuinely popular among Athenians who would expect to share in its profits, even if only indirectly and collectively, and not to have to bear its burdens. — John Roberts
The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations. — H. G. Wells
... Athenians are addicted to innovation. They are daring beyond their judgment they toil on with little opportunity for enjoying, being ever engaged in getting, they were born into the world to take no rest themselves, and to give none to others. — Thucydides
Our society is falling back increasingly on rampant consumerism and self-promoting social media as a way for people to feel that their lives matter - self-centered means of numbing the questions of mattering. Culture has relapsed back into the self-aggrandizing, glorifying answers that the Athenians had presumed, which had Socrates railing against them until he got so annoying that they killed him. — Rebecca Goldstein
[M]ore than they wanted freedom, the Athenians wanted security. Yet they lost everything-security, comfort, and freedom. This was because they wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them. The freedom they were seeking was freedom from responsibility. It is no wonder, then, that they ceased to be free. In the modern world, we should recall the Athenians' dire fate whenever we confront demands for increased state paternalism. — Margaret Thatcher
The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong. — Steven Pressfield
So that we may not be like the Athenians, who never consulted except after the event done.
[Fr., Afin que ne semblons es Athenians, qui ne consultoient jamais sinon apres le cas faict.] — Francois Rabelais
Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, Alcibiades absconded, saying that that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it. — Plutarch
Demosthenes told Phocion, "The Athenians will kill you some day when they once are in a rage." "And you," said he, "if they are once in their senses." — Plutarch
The wide difference between the two characters, the slowness and want of energy of the Spartans as contrasted with the dash and enterprise of their opponents, proved of the greatest service, especially to a maritime empire like Athens. Indeed this was shown by the Syracusans, who were most like the Athenians in character, and also most successful in combating them. — Thucydides
What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
This was the Athenians' war against the King of Macedon, a war of words. Words are the only weapons the Athenians have left. — Livy
What made the war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta. — Thucydides
Frequently consider the connection of all things in the universe. .. We should not say 'I am an Athenian' or 'I am a Roman' but 'I am a citizen of the Universe. — Marcus Aurelius
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. — Thucydides
[Regarding legislative assemblies,] the number ought at most to be kept within a certain limit, in order to avoid the confusion and intemperance of a multitude. In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob. — James Madison
You make learning fun. Like a children’s book or after school special. Tell me about your…um, Athenian women. — Richelle Mead
In Conclusion
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