SARAH'S MOST WORSHIPFUL Greetings, and welcome to Sarah's Most Worshipful History Page. This page will contain some of Sarah's favorite quotes from beloved historians, from Herodotus and Thucydides to Foucault. This site is now very much IN PROGRESS, so please stay calm. More wisdom from the great historians will come. Thucydides Selections from The Peloponnesian War From the Introduction: "In investigating past history, and in forming the conclusions which I have formed, it must be admitted that one cannot rely on every detail which has come down to us by way of tradition. People are inclined to accept all stories of ancient times in an uncritical way--even when tthese stories concern their own native countries." "Most people, in fact, will not take trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear." The Athenians to the Melians, from The Melian Dialogue: "Our aims and our actions are perfectly consistent with the beliefs men hold about the gods and with the principles which govern their own conduct. Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men lead us to conclude that it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can. This is not a law that we made ourselves, nor were we the first to act upon it when it was made. We found it already in existence, and we shall leave it to exist for ever among those who come after us. We are merely acting in accordance with it, and we know that you or anybody else with the same power as ours would be acting in precisely the same way." "The standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept." "Hope, that comforter in daner! If one already has solid advantages to fall back on, one can indulge in hope. It may do harm, but it will not destroy one. But hope is by nature an expesnive commodity, and those who are risking their all on one cast find out what it means only when they are already ruined; it never fails them in the period when such a knowledge would enable them to take precautions." Cleon, from the Mytilenian Debate: "We should realize that a city is better off with bad laws, so long as they remained fixed, than with good laws that are constantly being altered, that lack of learning combined with sound common sense if more helpful than the kind of cleverness that gets out of hand, and that as a general rule states are better governed by the man in the street than by intellectuals. These are the sort of people who want to appear wiser than the laws, who want to get their own way in every general discussion, because they feel that they cannot show off their intelligence in matters or greater importance, and who, as a result, very often bring ruin on their country." On the Civil War in Corcyra, 427: "And indeed most people are more ready to call villainy cleverness than simple-mindedness honesty. They are proud of the first quality and ashamed of the second." |