Thucydides Quotes
Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.
Thucydides. The Open Society and Its Enemies. Translated by Karl R. Popper, vol. 1, George Routledge & Sons, 1945, p. 186.
The free man, not controlled by others may see no rational reason to fight and therefore the refusal to war can be as courageous as fighting. This idea is still not accepted in many cultures and nations. The issue was argued mightily in the Vietnam War. Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims.
Trumbo was morally opposed to war. He also refused to name Hollywood communists to Congressional Committees during the Red Scare. He was then blacklisted from his occupation, screen writing.
Thucydides (/θjuːˈsɪdɪdiːz/; Ancient Greek: Θουκυδίδης Thoukūdídēs [tʰuːkyːdídɛːs]; c. 460 – c. 400 BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" by those who accept his claims to have applied strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the deities, as outlined in his introduction to his work.
