When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls--the World. — Lord Byron
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? — John Cleese
All things may be bought in Rome with money. — Juvenal
He [Caesar Augustus] found a city built of brick; he left it built of marble.
[Lat., Urbem lateritiam accepit, mamoream relinquit.] — Suetonius
For what fortress, what city, in the wide extent of the Roman empire, can hope to exist, secure and impregnable, if it is our pleasure that it should be erased from the earth? — Attila the Hun
Black men of Carthage, Ethiopia, of Timbuktu and Alexandria gave the likes of civilization to this world — Marcus Garvey
The man who first brought ruin upon the Roman people was he who pampered them by largesses and amusements. — Plutarch
Would that the Roman people had but one neck! — Caligula
Short Roman Civilization Quotes
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. — Ariel Durant
From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day. — Will Durant
Rome has not seen a modern building in more than half a century. It is a city frozen in time. — Richard Meier
Every monument of civilization is a monument of barbarism — Walter Benjamin
Roman Civilization Image Quotes
Thousands of tired, never-shaken, over civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home, that wilderness is a necessity.
Roman Empire Quotes
I am not carrying on a war of extermination against the Romans. I am contending for honor and empire. My ancestors yielded to Roman valour. I am endeavouring that others, in their turn, will be obliged to yield to my good fortune, and my valour. — Hannibal
It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming. — Garrison Keillor
We must now face the difficult task of moving towards a single economy, a single political entity .. For the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire we have the opportunity to unite Europe. — Romano Prodi
Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.
It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy. The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States. — Boutros Boutros-Ghali
This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. — Voltaire
God is the ruler of history. His times are well chosen The Roman Empire was an instrument in his hand. And so are the nations of the modern world. — John Gresham Machen
I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.
When we look at these types of things it echoes to lessons we haven't learned from the past. We still don't see Rome as a negative thing; we glorify the Roman Empire. It was a fascist state under the control of an incredibly authoritarian militant pre-emptive striking genocidal regime. — Immortal Technique
Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave. — Edward Gibbon
We still haven't gotten the message; we still don't see that it's bad. And then we copy everything about their [Roman Empire] structure. I mean Paul Bremer was the proconsul of Iraq. We're still using ancient terminology, we still have Senators and we have an Emperor, almost. — Immortal Technique
People came into the Church in the Roman Empire because the Church was so good-Catholics were so good to one another, and they were so good to pagans, too. High-pressure evangelization strikes me as an attempt to deprive people of their freedom of choice. — Andrew Greeley
Ancient Rome Quotes
Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate? — Will Rogers
OVATION, n. n ancient Rome, a definite, formal pageant in honor of one who had been disserviceable to the enemies of the nation. A lesser "triumph." — Ambrose Bierce
The old Lie:Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. — Wilfred Owen
Laughter ... the most civilized music in the world.
We stand todaybefore the awful proposition: either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; or, the victory of socialism. — Rosa Luxemburg
Ancient Rome was as confident of the immutability of its world and the continual expansion and improvement of the human lot as we are today. — Arthur Erickson
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
In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics.
[In ancient Rome,] why did the senate after killing Caesar turn around and give the government to his nephew? Why did France after they got rid of the king and that whole system turn around and give it to Napoleon? It's the same thing with Germany and Hitler. — George Lucas
Ancient art was the tyrant of Egypt, the mistress of Greece and the servant of Rome. — Henry Fuseli
War may be the game of kings, but, like the games at ancient Rome, it is generally exhibited to please and pacify the people. — Arthur Helps
My mother's father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome.' While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I'd be Horatius keeping the bridge. — Bernie Taupin
Roman Emperor Quotes
The supreme nobility of a Roman emperor does not consist in being a master of slaves, but in being a lord of free men, who loves freedom even in those who serve him. — Julius Evola
Daniel was in the greatest credit amongst the Jews, till the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian . And to reject his prophecies, is to reject the Christian religion. For this religion is founded upon his prophecy concerning the Messiah . — Isaac Newton
Wine is the most civilized thing in the world
Remember, gentlemen, what a Roman emperor said: The corpse of an enemy always smells sweet. — Napoleon Bonaparte
A single friar who goes counter to all Christianity for a thousand years must be wrong. — Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
The victory of the Church over the power which was embodied in the Roman imperial system was not won by seizing the levers of power: it was won when the victims knelt down in the Colosseum and prayed in the name of Jesus for the Emperor. — Lesslie Newbigin
There is no civil nor religios law, that has broken, nor can break the bond of fraternity which nature has established between men.
How absurd to try to make two men think alike on matters of religion, when I cannot make two timepieces agree. — Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
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
Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list -- the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation. — Karl Marx
All the wonders of the Greek civilization heaped together are less wonderful than the single book of Psalms. Greece had all that this world could give her; but the flowers of Paradise blossomed in Palestine alone. — William E. Gladstone
We have created a Star Wars civilization with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.
The sentiments attributed to Christ are in the Old Testament. They were familiar in the Jewish schools and to all the Pharisees, long before the time of Christ, as they were familiar in all the civilizations of the earth - Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian, Greek, and Hindu. — Joseph McCabe
We were discussing civilization and the fact that young men among the Greeks at that time were idiots and uneducated, so the men had emotional and friendly relationships with members of their own sex — Marion Zimmer Bradley
I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded. — Simone Weil
In all of Western civilization, there have been societies that celebrating the homosexuality, the ancient Greeks. But they, in fact, protected the institution of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. They got the joke. And the American people get the joke. — Ken Blackwell
I'm sure back in the Greek days or the Roman Empire days, when guys fought in arenas and were fighting lions, people were talking smack. Every era in history has someone talking smack. No way you can have talent and not proclaim your victory. — J. B. Smoove
The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilization, owe little or none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old Greeks, though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people. — Charles Darwin
Thanks to my memory, which enabled me to quote Latin and to discuss Greek and Roman civilization, it became obvious to some of my colleagues in other fields that I was interested in things outside mathematics. This lead quickly to very pleasant relationships. — Stanislaw Ulam
Great Roman Quotes
The more we study the early Church, the more we realize that it was a society of ministers. About the only similarity between the Church at Corinth and a contemporary congregation, either Roman Catholic or Protestant, is that both are marked, to a great degree, by the presence of sinners. — D. Elton Trueblood
Roman Polanski is a man who cares deeply about his art and its place in this world. What happened to him on his incredible path is filled with tragedy, and most men would have collapsed. Instead, he became a great artist and continues to make great films. — Harvey Weinstein
The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear. — Baron de Montesquieu
The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear. — Montesquieu
Set we forward; let
A Roman and a British ensign wave
Friendly together. So through Lud's town march,
And in the temple of the great Jupiter
Our peace we'll ratify, seal it with feasts.
Set on there! Never was a war did cease,
Ere bloody hands were washed, with such a peace. — William Shakespeare
The biblical way to express God’s love to a sinner is to show him how great his sin is (using the Law—see Romans 7:13; Galatians 3:24), and then give him the incredible grace of God in Christ. — Ray Comfort
The characteristic danger of great nations, like the Romans or the English which have a long history of continuous creation, is that they may at last fail from not comprehending the great institutions which they have created — Walter Bagehot
If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse. — Cory Booker
There's a great deal about Roman Catholicism that I basically disagree with. For instance, the doctrine of Mary which... I have studied that stuff and I simply don't think that has any mileage at all biblically, theologically, and I've got some friends who are very disappointed that I say that. — N. T. Wright
Our society is the product of several great religious and philosophical traditions. The ideas of the Greeks and Romans, Christianity, Judaism, humanism and the Enlightenment have made us who we are. — Jan Peter Balkenende
Roman Soldiers Quotes
It was not the people or the Roman soldiers who put Jesus on the cross - it was your sins and my sins that made it necessary for Him to volunteer His death. — Billy Graham
Hey, we're like soldiers. Would you go to the Roman army and ask them if they thought they were going to win the battle? If I didn't think we could win, I wouldn't be here. I'd stay home and get fat. — Ken Simonton
You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, and wipe it clean of life - but if you desire to defend it, protect it,and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman Legions did - by putting your soldiers in the mud. — T. R. Fehrenbach
Refusing further service as a Roman soldier: I am a soldier of Christ: combat is not permitted to me. — Martin of Tours
I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary. — Thomas Jefferson
The strange thing about Roman soldiers in the comics was the amount of trouble they took over their armor and their helmets, and then, after all that, they left their legs bare. It didn't make any sense at all. Weatherwise or otherwise. — Arundhati Roy
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. — Thomas Jefferson
The Roman legions were formed in the first instance of citizen soldiers, who yet had been made to submit to a rigid discipline, and to feel that in that submission lay their strength. — Goldwin Smith
Even well-known historians like Edward Gibbon are talking about how the soldiers of the 18th century were not able to do the same type of exercise [like Romans]. — Garry Kasparov
The denarius was the silver coin that traded at the time of the Roman Republic, containing 3.9 grams of silver, while gold became the most valuable money in the civilized areas of the world at the time and gold coins were becoming more widespread. Julius Caesar, the last dictator of the Roman Republic, created the aureus coin, which contained around 8 grams of gold and was widely accepted across Europe and the Mediterranean, increasing the scope of trade and specialization in the Old World. Economic stability reigned for seventy-five years, even through the political upheaval of his assassination, which saw the Republic transformed into an Empire under his chosen successor, Augustus. This continued until the reign of the infamous emperor Nero, who was the first to engage in the Roman habit of coin clipping, wherein the Emperor would collect the coins of the population and mint them into newer coins with less gold or silver content. — Saifedean Ammous
The civil liberty of every mode of worship, and full power given to all of openly and publicly manifesting their opinions and their ideas conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people... The Roman Pontiff cannot and ought not to reconcile himself or agree with, progress, liberalism and modern civilization. — Pope Pius IX
I am sure no other civilization, not even the Romans, has showed such a vast proportion of ignominious and degraded nudity, and ugly, squalid dirty sex. Because no other civilization has driven sex into the underworld, and nudity to the W.C. — D. H. Lawrence
That country [Carthage] was rapidly sinking into the state of barbarism from whence it had been raised by the Phoenician colonies and Roman laws; and every step of intestine discord was marked by some deplorable victory of savage man over civilized society. — Edward Gibbon
This scripture [Romans 13:1-6] is wrested from the scope of God's Spirit, and the nature of the place, and cannot truly be interpreted to mean that the power of the civil magistrate may be exercised in spiritual or soul matters. — Roger Williams
Roman civilization had achieved, within the bounds of its technology, relatively as great a mastery of time and space as we have achieved today. — Arthur Erickson
My point is, as civilization is progressing, Mosaic law came down from the mountain, was handed to civilization, it emerged through the Greek civilization as the Greeks were developing their Age of Reason. And we're talking about the foundation of Western Civilization, and almost concurrently with that, Roman law was emerging as well. — Steve King
My last days at MGM were like the fall of the Roman Empire in fast motion. — Joseph Barbera
In Italy, on the breaking up of the Roman Empire, society might be said to be resolved into its original elements, - into hostile atoms, whose only movement was that of mutual repulsion. — Edward Everett
We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge, just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization. — Herbert Read
In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. — Edward Gibbon
I think that any authentic feeling one has of life should be a feeling of defeat. It's a losing game. You're going to die. Civilization is going to end. Our society is in decline, and we should feel OK about it because Roman society was in decline and before it the Assyrian one was, and they disappeared off this earth and we will disappear too. — Etgar Keret
What I tried to show is that this idea of this fundamental conflict between savagery and civilization goes back to the very beginnings of Western history. I go back to the Greeks, I go back to the Romans. You can read Homer. And of course Homer has his great heroes involved in this myth, this wonderful mythic contest with savage tribal peoples, half-human monsters on distant parts of the world. — Robert A. Williams, Jr.
Western Civilization has been in a state of decline since the Edwardian age, say 1910. That was the height of Greco-Roman European civilization. Then there was the First World War. That was the beginning of the end. That civilization has been in a decline ever since. But from the American triumphalist point of view our wonderful electronic revolution is really the forefront of an ongoing wonderful civilization. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Look at the history of civil laws in our world and the source from which they emerged, and you will see that the vast majority of them arose directly from, or where based in principle on, Roman Canon Law, or the laws of other religious origin. Sharia is another notable example. — Neale Donald Walsch
Perhaps Western civilization is in a post-decline phase, or maybe the decline is just taking a really long time, like the Roman Empire's did. The Romans had gladiators and Christian-hungry lions and that sort of thing. We have MTV. — Tom Shales
A small number of temples was protected by the fears, the venality, the taste, or the prudence of the civil and ecclesiastical governors. The temple of the Celestial Venus at Carthage, whose sacred precincts formed a circumference of two miles, was judiciously converted into a Christian church; and a similar consecration has preserved inviolate the majestic dome of the Pantheon at Rome. — Edward Gibbon
Such, indeed, is the policy of civil war: severely to remember injuries, and to forget the most important services. Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive. — Edward Gibbon
I wanted to get the most broad foundation for a lifelong education that I could find, and that was studying Latin and the classics. Meaning Roman and Greek history and philosophy and ancient civilizations. — Tim Blake Nelson
... All questions concerning the rise of Christianity are one: How was it done? How did a tiny and obscure messianic movement from the edge of the Roman Empire dislodge classical paganism and become the dominant faith of Western civilization? Although this is the only question, it requires many answers - no one thing led to the triumph of Christianity. — Rodney Stark
From Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope:" "I am not willing to have the state deny American citizens a civil union that confers equivalent rights on such basic matters as hospital visitation or health insurance coverage simply because the people they love are of the same sex - nor am I willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount." — Barack Obama
When the French nation gradually came into existence among the ruins of the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language was at the same time slowly evolved. — Lytton Strachey
Obama, who is becoming more and more preacher-like, wants to be the Punisher-in-Chi ef of the Western World, the Avenger-in-Chie f. There is something oddly Roman about him. ... The lesser races must be civilized and they must be punished... Everyone outside the Roman Empire was called a barbarian. Everyone outside Obama’s empire is called a terrorist. — Robert Fisk
In less than a century after the barbarian nations settled in their new conquests, almost all the effects of the knowledge and civility, which the Romans had spread through Europe, disappeared. Not only the arts of elegance, which minister to luxury, and re supported by it, but many of the useful arts, without which life can scarcely be contemplated as comfortable, were neglected or lost. — Bryan Ward-Perkins
The praise of a civilized world is justly due to Christianity;—war, by the influence of the humane principles of that religion, has been stripped of half its horrors. The French renounce Christianity, and they relapse into barbarism;—war resumes the same hideous and savage form which it wore in the ages of Gothic and Roman violence. — Alexander Hamilton
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks, before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman empire. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Psychologically, I'm a Roman Baptist. — Samuel Bowers
We must ask whether our machine technology makes us proof against all those destructive forces which plagued Roman society and ultimately wrecked Roman civilization. Our reliance - an almost religious reliance - upon the power of science and technology to forever ensure the progress of our society, might blind us to some very real problems which cannot be solved by science and technology. — Robert Strausz-Hupe
A legacy that powerful does not disappear. Next to the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans were babies. Our modern nations like Great Britain and America? Blinks of an eye...The very oldest root of civilization, at least of Western civilization, is Egypt. Look at the pyramid on the dollar bill. Look at the Washington Monument—the world’s largest Egyptian obelisk. Egypt is still.......very much alive. — Rick Riordan
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