I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. — Diogenes
The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day. — David Sedaris
...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
And thence from Athens turn away our eyes To seek new friends and stranger companies. — William Shakespeare
How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens. — Alexander The Great
When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. — Edith Hamilton
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
Short Athens Quotes
What has Athens to do with Jerusalem. — Tertullian
An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise. — Robert South
I am not going to let Athens affect the rest of my life. — Paula Radcliffe
Gone, glimmering through the dream of things that were. — Lord Byron
Athens is like a sluggish horse, and I am the gadfly trying to sting it into life. — Jostein Gaarder
The commonwealth of Athens is become a forest of beasts. — William Shakespeare
The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable. — Thucydides
The Olympic Games of the Modern Era began in 1896 in the city of Athens. — Bill Toomey
When we first started, we were a band from Athens and that was so off the map. — Michael Stipe
Athens Image Quotes
Athenian Quotes
The Athenians govern the Greeks; I govern the Athenians; you, my wife, govern me; your son governs you. — Themistocles
We need money, for sure, Athenians, and without money nothing can be done that ought to be done. — Demosthenes
... the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. — John F. Kennedy
It is not I who have lost the Athenians, but the Athenians who have lost me. — Anaxagoras
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
Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. — Plutarch
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
We Athenians hold that it is not poverty that is disgraceful but the failure to struggle against it. — Pericles
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
Greece Quotes
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls--the World. — Lord Byron
If you deconstruct Greece, you will in the end see an olive tree, a grapevine, and a boat remain. That is, with as much, you reconstruct her. — Odysseas Elytis
I was a fighter pilot, flying Hurricanes all round the Mediterranean. I flew in the Western Desert of Libya, in Greece, in Syria, in Iraq and in Egypt. — Roald Dahl
Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness—she with those delicate feet of hers, never touching the earth, gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. She entangles one man, now another. — Homer
Your ancestors came to Macedonia and the rest of Hellas [Greece] and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury. I have been appointed leader of the Greeks, and wanting to punish the Persians I have come to Asia, which I took from you. — Alexander The Great
The cure of many diseases remains unknown to the physicians of Hellos (Greece) because they do not study the whole person. — Socrates
Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury; ... [and] I have been appointed leader of the Greeks. — Arrian
We are not only talking about waves of refugees coming to Greece, to Italy, and elsewhere. Destabilizing the Balkans means Lebanonization, and that means destabilizing all of Europe. — Fatos Nano
Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie. — Steven Pressfield
Shall I pass by and leave you lying there because of the expedition you led against Greece, or shall I set you up again because of your magnanimity and your virtues in other respects? — Alexander The Great
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
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
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
Much of the Greek coastline comprises steep cliffs and there are few coastal plains for agriculture. Inland are more steep cliffs, rivers that will not allow transportation, and few wide, fertile valleys. There is too little good agricultural land for Greece to become a major agricultural exporter, or to develop more than a handful of major urban areas containing highly educated, highly skilled, and technologically advanced populations. Its situation is further exacerbated by its location, with Athens positioned at the tip of the peninsula, almost cut off from land trade with Europe. It is reliant on the Aegean Sea for access to maritime trade in the region — but across that sea lies Turkey, a large potential enemy. Greece spends a vast amount of euros, which it doesn’t have, on defense. There are about 1,400 Greek islands 6,000 if you include various rocks sticking out of the Aegean of which approximately 200 are inhabited. It takes a decent navy just to patrol this territory, never mind one strong enough to defer any attempt to take the islands over. The result is a huge cost in military spending that Greece doesn’t have. During the Cold War, the Americans, and to a lesser extent, the British were content to underwrite some of the military requirements in order to keep the Soviet Union out of the Aegean and the Mediterranean. When the Cold War ended, so did the checks. — Tim Marshall
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
Ibsen is like this room where we are sitting, with all the tables and chairs. Do I care whether you have twenty or twenty-five links on your chain? Hedda Gabler, Nora and the rest: it is not that I want! I want Rome and the Coliseum, the Acropolis, Athens; I want beauty, and the flame of life. — Eleanora Duse
The Parthenon is really only a farmyard over which someone put a roof; colonades and sculptures were added because there were people in Athens who happened to be working and wanted to express themselves. — Pablo Picasso
My good friend, you are a citizen of Athens, a city which is very great and very famous for its wisdom and power - are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul? — Plato
Athens built the Acropolis. Corinth was a commercial city, interested in purely materialistic things. Today we admire Athens, visit it, preserve the old temples, yet we hardly ever set foot in Corinth. — Harold Urey
I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mind all the time. Because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens. — Christine Lagarde
The nations which have put mankind and posterity most in their debt have been small states Israel, Athens, Florence, Elizabethan England. — Bill Vaughan
The way some German politicians have lashed out at Greece when the country fell into the crisis has left deep wounds there. I was just as shocked by the banners of protesters in Athens that showed the German chancellor in a Nazi uniform. — Jean-Claude Juncker
The hijacking of an American jet in Athens looms larger in our concern than the parent who kills a child, even though the one happens rarely, and the other happens daily. — Gavin de Becker
So, we went from being an Athens band to being a Georgia band to being a Southern band to being an American band from the East Coast to being an American band and now we're kind of an international phenomenon. — Michael Stipe
If you want to live in Tennessee, God bless you, I wish for you a long life and starry evenings. But that is not where I want to live my life. I want to live my life in Carthage, in Athens. I want to live my life in Rome. I want to live my life in the center of the world. I want to live my life in Los Angeles. — Richard Rodriguez
Such is beauty ever,-neither here nor there, now nor then,-neither in Rome nor in Athens, but wherever there is a soul to admire. — Henry David Thoreau
Trees are good for contemplation. Plato and Aristotle did their best thinking in the groves of olives and figs around Athens, and Buddha found enlightenment beneath a bo or peepul tree. — Colin Tudge
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
Greece isn't a democracy now it's run through a troika - three foreign officials that fly into Athens airport and tell the Greeks what they can and can't do. — Nigel Farage
You may name a bronze statue 'Liberty,' or a painted figure in a city hall 'Commerce,' or a marble form in a temple 'Athene' or 'Venus;' but what is really there is only a representation of a single woman. — George Edward Woodberry
My sisters and I were fortunate to travel through Asia and Europe at very young ages. We confronted extraordinary beauty in Athens and unspeakable poverty in India. — Mary Chapin Carpenter
Many of our ideas of democracy, so much of our literature and philosophy and science can be traced back to roots right here in Athens. — Barack Obama
What Art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern: the distinctive faculty. In the minds of men the useful has succeeded to the beautiful. Instead of the city of the Violet Crown, a Lancashire village has expanded into a mighty region of factories and warehouses. Yet, rightly understood, Manchester is as great a human exploit; as Athens. — Benjamin Disraeli
The disabusing a man strongly possessed with an opinion of his own worth is the very same ill office that was done to the fool at Athens, who fancied all the ships that came into the harbor were his own. — Francois Alexandre Frederic, duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
In cities like Athens, poor houses lined narrow and tortuous streets in spite of luxurious public buildings. — Stephen Gardiner
Of the many smells of Athens two seem to me the most characteristic - that of garlic, bold and deadly like acetylene gas. and that of dust, soft and warm and caressing like tweed. — Evelyn Waugh
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