Pericles Quotes

“For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your examples, and, esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness, do not weigh too nicely the perils of war."

[Funeral Oration of Pericles]”
― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

“What is democracy? It is what it says, the rule of the people. It is as good as the people are, or as bad.”
― Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine

“The fact is that men who know nothing of decency in their own lives are only too ready to launch foul slanders against their betters and to offer them up as victims to the evil deity of popular envy.”
― Plutarch

“Periclean Greeks employed the term idiotis, without any connotation of stupidity or subnormality, to mean simply 'a person indifferent to public affairs.' Obviously, there is something wanting in the apolitical personality. But we have also come to suspect the idiocy of politicization—of the professional pol and power broker. The two idiocies make a perfect match, with the apathy of the first permitting the depredations of the second.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports

“The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty.”
― Pericles

“I thought of Pericles' speech to the families of the Athenian war dead, in which he said, "What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
― Eric Greitens, The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL

“I want to build / and raise anew / Theseus' Temple and the Stadiums / and where Pericles lived
But there's no money, too much spent today / I had a guest over and we sat together.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“What I fear is not the enemy’s strategy but our own mistakes.”
― Pericles

“She speaks, my lord, that may be, hath endured a grief Might equal yours, if both were justly weighed.”
― William Shakespeare

“I am a maid,
My lord, that ne'er before invited eyes,
But have been gazed on like a comet: she speaks,
My lord, that, may be, hath endured a grief
Might equal yours, if both were justly weigh'd.
Though wayward fortune did malign my state,
My derivation was from ancestors
Who stood equivalent with mighty kings:
But time hath rooted out my parentage,
And to the world and awkward casualties
Bound me in servitude.
~Marina, "Pericles”
― Wiliam Shakspeare

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments,' said the Greek statesman Pericles, 'but what is woven into the lives of others.' Your legacy is that which you teach.”
― James Kerr, Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life

“Time's the king of men,
He's both their parent, and he is their grave,
And gives them what he will, not what they crave.”
― Shakespeare

“Yüzü övgüler kitabı, hiçbir şey okunmuyor.”
― William Shakespeare

“Ölümün anısı ayna gibi olmalı,
Bize hayatın bir nefes, hayata
Güvenmenin de hata olduğunu söyleyen.”
― William Shakespeare

“Sen güzel bir kemansın, teller duyguların,
Dokununca insana meşru müziği tattıracak,
Göğü yere çekip tanrıları sus pus edecek;
Ama vaktinden önce çalınırsa
Yalnızca cehennemi ayağa kaldıracak.”
― William Shakespeare