Browsing Topic Best Ancient Greek Quotes

I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.

One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.

God helps those who help themselves.

There is nothing permanent except change.

You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships every day. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.

Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

Man is the measure of all things.

We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.

A friend to all is a friend to none.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

I have a high art, I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.

He is the richest who is content with the least.

Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.

Sex and sleep alone make me conscious that I am mortal.

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

The greater the Difficulty the more Glory in surmounting it, and the loss of false Joys secures to us a much better Possession of real ones.

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.

The ancient Greeks kept women athletes out of their games. They wouldn’t even let them on the sidelines. I’m not sure but that they were right.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

In some ways, Lotus Eaters is a journey disguised as a party film; there’s a circus in the movie, and there are parties, but the real story is of an internal journey. There’s themes of emptiness and excess and beauty and grief around it, but it’s always surrounded by these glamorous events, and those are ways of waylaying her on her journey in the same way that it is in the ancient Greek story.

For a long time on Earth humans didn’t worship good gods; that’s a new idea. The ancient Greek gods, the Hindu gods, are fairly amoral, most of them. We get stuck when we insist that God be both good and all-powerful.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

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.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

Strangers used to gather together at the cinema and sit together in the dark, like Ancient Greeks participating in the mysteries, dreaming the same dream in unison.

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.

There is one bit of advice given us by the ancient Greeks, and by the Jews in the Old Testament, and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money at interest; and lending money at interest – what we call investment – is the basis of our whole system.

The ancient Greeks were the first ones to say an unexamined life is not worth living. They don’t tell you of course what we found out, an examined life not that fascinating either.

Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn’t see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will. At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.