Athenians Quotes - Page 2

• [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

  Responsibility, Fate, Giving

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• ... 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

  Opportunity, Giving, Innovation

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• ... the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy.

  John F. Kennedy

  Atheism, Citizens, Crime

  Address to the American Newspaper Publishers, delivered 27 April 1961, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York

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• 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

  Oratory, Speech, Foxes

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1994). “Papers”

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• The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations.

  H. G. Wells

  Democracy, Ruins, Nations

  H. G. Wells, J. F. Horrabin, William Ross (2004). “The Outline of History: Prehistory to the Roman Republic”, p.418, Barnes & Noble Publishing

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• The Parisian is to the French what the Athenian was to the Greeks: no one sleeps better than he, no one is more openly frivolous and idle, no one appears more heedless. But this is misleading. He is given to every kind of listlessness, but when there is glory to be won he may be inspired with every kind of fury. Give him a pike and he will enact the tenth of August, a musket and you have Austerlitz. He was the springboard of Napoleon and the mainstay of Danton. At the cry of "la patrie" he enrols, and at the call of liberty he tears up the pavements. Beware of him!

  Victor Hugo

  Sleep, August, Paris

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• O Athenians, what toil do I undergo to please you!

  Alexander the Great

  Toil, Pleasure, Please

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations V2: Drawn From The Speech And Literature Of All Nations, Ancient And Modern (1922)". Book by Kate Louise Roberts, 2010.

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• 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

  Half, Empires, Arguing

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• The Andrians were the first of the islanders to refuse Themistocles' demand for money. He had put it to them that they would be unable to avoid paying, because the Athenians had the support of two powerful deities, one called Persuasion and the other Compulsion.The Andrians had replied that Athens was lucky to have two such useful gods, who were obviously responsible for her wealth and greatness; unfortunately, they themselves, in their small & inadequate land, had two utterly useless deities, who refused to leave the island and insisted on staying; and their names were Poverty and Inability.

  Herodotus

  Powerful, Greatness, Land

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• 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

  Cities, Two, Numbers

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• 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

  Savages, Mars, Venus

  Lactantius (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Lactantius (Annotated Edition)”, p.40, Jazzybee Verlag

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• 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

  Art, Men, Greek

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.150, Harvard University Press

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• But this is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best.

  Plato

  Running, Strong, Thinking

  Plato (0101). “Apology, Crito and Phaedo of Socrates”, p.29, Prabhat Prakashan

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• 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

  Party, Men, Law

  "Ancient Civilizations". Book by George Shelley Hughs, p. 596, 1896.

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• 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

  Character, Successful, Two

  Thucydides (1978). “The history of the Peloponnesian War: illustrated with maps from the 1820 Oxford edition”

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• 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

  Mind, Quality, Prejudice

  "Irish Essays. A Speech at Eton" by Matthew Arnold, 1882.

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• Through the forest have I gone. But Athenian found I none, On whose eyes I might approve This flower's force in stirring love. Night and silence.--Who is here? Weeds of Athens he doth wear: This is he, my master said, Despised the Athenian maid; And here the maiden, sleeping sound, On the dank and dirty ground. Pretty soul! she durst not lie Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy. Churl, upon thy eyes I throw All the power this charm doth owe. When thou wakest, let love forbid Sleep his seat on thy eyelid: So awake when I am gone; For I must now to Oberon.

  William Shakespeare

  Weed, Lying, Dirty

  William Shakespeare, Thomas Bowdler (1850). “The Family Shakspeare, in One Volume: In which Nothing is Added to the Original Text, But Those Words and Expressions are Omitted which Cannot with Propriety be Read in a Family”, p.136

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• [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

  Character, Passion, Order

  James Madison, John Jay (1901). “The Federalist: A Commentary on the Constitution of the United States”

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• We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens - like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It's never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say?

  David Graeber

  Philosophy, Believe, Mean

  "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology". Book by David Graeber, 2004.

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• I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy.

  Aristotle

  Philosophy, Sin

  Catholic Way Publishing, Aristotle, Plato (2015). “The Philosophy Collection [97 Books]”, p.26, Catholic Way Publishing

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• 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

  War, Believe, Memorable

  Thucydides, Sir Richard Winn Livingstone (1960). “The History of the Peloponnesian War”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• We need money, for sure, Athenians, and without money nothing can be done that ought to be done.

  Demosthenes

  Needs, Done, Need Money

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• Everyone, including 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

  Cities, Advice, Excellence

  "Protagoras". Book by Plato, Oxford University Press, p. 19, 2002.

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• 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

  Connections, Citizens, Ethics

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• The members of the department became like the Athenians who, according to the Apostle Paul, "spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing." Anyone who thought he had a bright idea rushed out to try it out on a colleague. Groups of two or more could be seen every day in offices, before blackboards or even in corridors, arguing vehemently about these 'brain storms.' It is doubtful whether any paper ever emerged for publication that had not run the gauntlet of such criticism. The whole department thus became far greater than the sum of its individual members.

  Joel Henry Hildebrand

  Running, Science, Ideas

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