179 Greek Quotes

Following is our list of greek quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about ancient greek.

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Famous Greek Quotes

Greek was very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries. — Gilbert Murray

Drink, live like the Greeks, eat, gorge. — Plautus

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

Greeks only agree with each other about going to the toilet — Greek Proverbs

After shaking hands with a Greek, count your fingers. — Albanian Proverbs

The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day. — David Sedaris

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

You know, it is said that we Greeks are a fervent and warm blooded breed. Well, let me tell you something - it is true. — Melina Mercouri

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence. — John Milton

We Greeks believe that a man who takes no part in public affairs is not merely lazy, but good for nothing — Thucydides

When a Greek shakes your hand, count your fingers after. — Albanian Proverbs

...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

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

I am a citizen, not of Athens, or Greece, but of the world. — Socrates

Compared with the Egyptians, the Greeks are childish mathematicians. — Egyptian Proverbs

Short Greek Quotes

  • When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser. — Socrates
  • There is no possession more valuable than a good and faithful friend. — Socrates
  • He who has overcome his fears will truly be free. — Aristotle
  • I have a high art, I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me. — Archilochus
  • I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world. — Socrates
  • I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. — Diogenes
  • Sex and sleep alone make me conscious that I am mortal. — Alexander The Great
  • False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. — Plato
  • Times change, and we change with them. — William Henry Harrison
  • Be as you wish to seem. — Socrates

Greek Image Quotes

She soars on her own wings. - Socrates quote

She soars on her own wings. — Socrates

I've come to realize that life is not a musical comedy, it's a Greek tragedy. - Billy Joel quote

I've come to realize that life is not a musical comedy, it's a Greek tragedy. — Billy Joel

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

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

He is the richest who is content with the least. — Socrates

Few men have the natural strength to honor a friend's success without envy. — Aeschylus

Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind. — Winston Churchill

The old Lie:Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. — Wilfred Owen

Greek God Quotes

If you could meet your grandkids as elderly citizens in the year 2100 … you would view them as being, basically, Greek gods… that's where we're headed. — Michio Kaku

A God in the hand is worth two in the bush. - Frederick Buechner

A God in the hand is worth two in the bush. — Frederick Buechner

For me Esoteric Hitlerism is being possessed by the archetypes of the collective unconscious which the Greeks used to call gods. — Miguel Serrano

The Greeks bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language--the word 'enthusiasm'--en theos--a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it. — Louis Pasteur

If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody's mercy, then you will probably write melodrama. — Lillian Hellman

We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos - the right moment - for a 'metamorphosis of the gods', of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. — Carl Jung

The Serbs have only two friends, God and the Greeks. — Radovan Karadzic

Rachel: You're a half-blood, too? Annabeth: Shhh! Just announce it to the world, how about? Rachel: Okay. Hey, everybody! These two aren't human! They're half Greek god!...They don't seem to care. — Rick Riordan

The Greeks, it will be recalled, regarded Eros, the god of love, as the eldest of the gods; but also as the youngest, born fresh and dewy-eyed in every living heart. — Joseph Campbell

What good are Greek, commentaries, insight, gift, and all the rest, if there is no heart for Christ? — Jim Elliot

Latin And Greek Quotes

I must confess the language of symbols is to me A Babylonish dialect Which learned chemists much affect; It is a party-coloured dress Of patch'd and piebald languages: 'T is English cut on Greek and Latin, Like fustian heretofore on satin. — Sir Richard Phillips

At 20, I realized that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father and asked him permission to engage in a professional career. In eight months I filled my gaps in Latin, Greek and mathematics, graduated from high school, and entered medical school in Turin. — Rita Levi-Montalcini

English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes, the Vikings and then the French and then the Renaissance with all the Latin and Greek and Hebrew in the background. — David Crystal

In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in High School to teaching remedial English in college. — Joseph Sobran

Botany is the art of insulting flowers in Greek and Latin. — Alphonse Karr

While there's life, there is hope. — Stephen Hawking

I am wonderfully pleased when I meet with any passage in an old Greek or Latin author, that is not blown upon, and which I have never met with in any quotation. — Joseph Addison

The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity is of wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either. — William Jones

He was born a King. The wise men came from the East and asked, 'Where is He that is born King of the Jews?' (Matthew 2:2). He died a King. In Greek, in Latin, and in Hebrew the description was written above His cross, 'This is Jesus, The King' (Matthew 27:37) — W. A. Criswell

Hit the nail on the head. — John Heywood

Greek Art Quotes

Your looks are laughable, unphotographable, yet you're my favorite work of art. Is your figure less than Greek, is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak, are you smart? — Chet Baker

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The future science of government should be called 'la cybernétique' (1843) Coining the French word to mean 'the art of governing,' from the Greek (Kybernetes = navigator or steersman), subsequently adopted as cybernetics by Norbert Weiner for the field of control and communication theory. — Andre-Marie Ampere

The Dance of the Future will have to become again a high religious art as it was with the Greeks. For art which is not religious is not art, it is mere merchandise — Isadora Duncan

The oldest theory of art belongs to the Greeks, who regarded art as an imitation (mimesis) of reality. The strength of that theory is that it explains the way in which art takes its materials from real life. — Leland Ryken

Prehistoric art came to move me much more than Greek art. Greek art has beautiful women and handsome men, but I don't care. — Pierre Soulages

I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living. — Raymond Chandler

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent. — John Ruskin

I would like my work to be recognized as being in the classical tradition (Coptic, Egyptian, Greek, Chinese), as representing the Ideal in the mind. Classical art cannot possibly be eclectic. One must see the ideal in one's own mind. It is like a memory - an awareness -of perfection. — Agnes Martin

I was the executive editor on a little magazine called Greek Accent, whose only claim to fame is that its art director went on to be the art director of Discover for many years. — Jane Haddam

Old Greek Quotes

A good man will take care of his horses and dogs, not only while they are young, but when old and past service. — Plutarch

A landscape, torn by mists and clouds, in which I can see ruins of old churches, as well as of Greek temples - that is Brahms. — Edvard Grieg

I envy those old Greek bathers, into whose hands were delivered Pericles, and Alcibiades, and the perfect models of Phidias. They had daily before their eyes the highest types of Beauty which the world has ever produced; for of all things that are beautiful, the human body is the crown. — Bayard Taylor

Shipping magnate of the 20th century If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning. — Aristotle

There is a misleading, unwritten rule that states if a quote giving advice comes from someone famous, very old, or Greek, then it must be good advice. — Bo Bennett

There is a misleading, unwritten rule that states if a quote giving advice comes from someone famous, very old, or Greek, then it must be good advice. — Robert Foster Bennett

America is not fighting to win a war. We are fighting to give an application to an old Greek proverb, which is that the purpose of war is not to annihilate an enemy but to get him to mend his ways. And we are confident we can get the enemy to mend his. — Arthur Goldberg

Proportions are what makes the old Greek temples classic in their beauty. They are like huge blocks, from which the air has been literally hewn out between the columns. — Arne Jacobsen

Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them? — Andrew Lang

What happened to the alpha-wolf?" "LEGOs." "Legos?" It sounded Greek but I couldn't recall anything mythological with that name. Wasn't it an island? "He was carrying a load of laundry into the basement and tripped on the old set of LEGOs his kids left on the stairs. Broke two ribs and an ankle. — Ilona Andrews

Greek Mythology Quotes

Being a hero doesn’t mean you’re invincible. It just means that you’re brave enough to stand up and do what’s needed. — Rick Riordan

According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves. — Plato

I'm obsessed with Greek mythology. My favorite goddess is Artemis. She's strong and reminds me of Katniss, the heroine of The Hunger Games. — Isabelle Fuhrman

Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn't really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. — Christopher Nolan

II know a little about Greek mythology. It's not that far away from the Nordic mythology. — Sayings

In our household, the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology — Barack Obama

Something has got to hold it together. I'm saying my prayers to Elmer, the Greek god of glue. — Tom Robbins

Hollywood grew to be the most flourishing factory of popular mythology since the Greeks. — Alistair Cooke

..,No love cannot leave where there is no trust..,~cupid and psyche..,"Greek mythology of Edith Hamilton — Edith Hamilton

In Greek mythology, Antaeus was a giant who was strong as long as he had contact with the earth. When he was lifted from the earth he lost strength. So it is with engineers. They must not become isolated from the real world... — Hyman Rickover

Greek Philosophy Quotes

Nothing exists; even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others. — Gorgias

You must understand what the Parthenon Marbles mean to us. They are our pride. They are our sacrifices. They are our noblest symbol of excellence. They are a tribute to the democratic philosophy. They are our aspirations and our name. They are the essence of Greekness. — Melina Mercouri

White folks was in the caves while we [blacks] was building empires ... We built pyramids before Donald Trump ever knew what architecture was ... we taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it. — Al Sharpton

When you want wisdom and insight as badly as you want to breathe, it is then you shall have it. — Socrates

Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few. — Pythagoras

Greek philosophy departs from the assumption that we can understand the world autonomously using our rational faculties. Islam is not saying this. — Tariq Ramadan

The gift of truth excels all other gifts. — Buddha

...for the object of education is to teach us to love beauty. — Plato

Those whose hearts are fixed on Reality itself deserve the title of Philosophers. — Plato

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending. — Karl Marx

Grecian Quotes

Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence. — Alexander Hamilton

ZEUS /n./ The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. — Ambrose Bierce

Trust not the horse, O Trojans. Be it what it may, I fear the Grecians even when they offer gifts. — Virgil

Sweet as sweetest Grecian honey will my song be when I sing, O Beloved, in the season of the Spring! — Ruben Dario

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. — William Butler Yeats

Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. — Henry David Thoreau

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make — William Butler Yeats

If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies. — William Faulkner

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. - Ode to a Grecian UrnJohn Keats

Our enemies, like the Grecian hero, have one vulnerable point. You have not touched it yet. What should have been their element of weakness has been suffered to remain an element of strength. — Jay Alan Sekulow

Greek Culture Quotes

In business you need two Jews for one Greek, two Greeks for one Syrian and two Syrians for one Armenian — Greek Proverbs

American culture is kind of a universal culture, I guess. It's things Greeks grew up with, common references you can use. It's very interesting. — Yorgos Lanthimos

Kant does represents a distinctively modern view of the human condition in contrast to that of ancient high culture, found in ancient Greek ethics and also in ancient Chinese ethics. — Allen W. Wood

The Greeks, with their truly healthy culture, have once and for all justified philosophy simply by having engaged in it, and having engaged in it more fully than any other people. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Greek culture is pleasant to contemplate because of its great simplicity and naturalness, and because of the absence of gadgets, each of which is sooner or later a cause of servitude. — George Sarton

I had the good luck a few years ago to visit the archeological site of Zippori in Israel ... I could see here displayed the Greek culture that Jesus decisively rejected, the same Greek culture that infiltrated the Christian religion soon after his death and has dominated Christianity ever since. — Freeman Dyson

Genetically, I'm pure Greek. Psychologically, environmentally, culturally, by choice, I'm a member of the black community. — Johnny Otis

Just as the ideal of classic Greek culture was the most perfect harmony of mind and body, so a human and a bicycle are the perfect synthesis of body and machine. — Richard Ballantine

Classical music is a special taste like Greek language or pre-Columbian archeology, not a common culture of reciprocal communication and psychological shorthand. — Allan Bloom

Greece Quotes

When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls--the World. — Lord Byron

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

If Greece had gone through a very normal political life, I may have not been in politics. But just the fact that I lived through huge upheavals and very difficult struggles and polarization and the barbarism of dictatorships - that made me feel that we had to change this country. — George Papandreou

Ancient Greece Quotes

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

Come back with your shield - or on it — Plutarch

I learned that along with the towering achievements of the cultures of ancient Greece and China there stood the culture of Africa, unseen and denied by the imperialist looters of Africa's material wealth. — Paul Robeson

I read mostly historical fiction - lots of stuff set in ancient Rome and ancient Greece. I also liked sci-fi and fantasy: David Gemmell, Raymond E. Feist. It's a nice escape from the world. As much as I do love real-life stories, they can often make you hurt in a way I'd rather not hurt. — Henry Cavill

People Writing About Greek

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Socrates

Socrates
quotes on love, life and education

449 10345
Read quotes by Albanian Proverbs

Albanian Proverbs
quotes on life, love and education

109 5
Read quotes by Aristotle

Aristotle
quotes on life, love and success

1252 18854
Read quotes by Gilbert Murray

Gilbert Murray
quotes on life, education and religion

12 102
Read quotes by Plautus

Plautus
quotes on war, play

265 1583
Read quotes by Greek Proverbs

Greek Proverbs
quotes on ancient, wisdom and culture

176 1

More Greek Quotes

Illnesses do not come upon us out of the blue. They are developed from small daily sins against Nature. When enough sins have accumulated, illnesses will suddenly appear. — Hippocrates

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. — Paul the Apostle

If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools. — Plato

Now you fear punishment and beg for your lives, so I will let you free, if not for any other reason so that you can see the difference between a Greek king and a barbarian tyrant, so do not expect to suffer any harm from me. A king does not kill messengers. — Alexander The Great

The Berbers belong to a powerful, formidable, and numerous people; a true people like so many others, the world has seen - like the Arabs, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans. — Ibn Khaldun

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. — Milan Kundera

The war of ideas is a Greek invention. It is one of the most important inventions ever made. Indeed, the possibility of fighting with with words and ideas instead of fighting with swords is the very basis of our civilization, and especially of all its legal and parliamentary institutions. — Karl Popper

There are no negro problems, or Polish problems, or Jewish problems, or Greek problems, or women's problems, there are HUMAN PROBLEMS”. — Jacque Fresco

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. — Barack Obama

There was reference made to a book written in Greek by a former Rabbi who had been converted to Christianity. There was reference to a publication of a high clergyman of Milan. Not even did Jews raise objections to that book. — Julius Streicher

Blaming speculators as a response to financial crisis goes back at least to the Greeks. It's almost always the wrong response. — Lawrence Summers

Evangelion (that we call the gospel) is a Greek word and signifieth good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man's heart glad and maketh him sing, dance, and leap for joy. — William Tyndale

The Jews were destroying both Greeks and Romans. They ate the flesh of their victims, made belts for themselves out of their entrails, and daubed themselves with their blood... In all, 220,000 men perished in Cyrene and 240,000 in Cyprus, and for this reason no Jew may set foot in Cyprus today. — Cassius Dio

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation. — Stella Adler

True friends visit us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come without invitation. — Theophrastus

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