Thucydides Quotes
… concessions to adversaries only end in self-reproach, and the more strictly they are avoided, the greater will be the chance of security
Thucydides, c. 460 BC -c. 400 BC, Ancient Greek Historian, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 1
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2nd Viscount Melbourne. The “American treaty” was the Webster–Ashburton Treaty to adjust the final borders between Canada and the United States that were still in dispute from the War of 1812. Note that the British Prime Minister was critical of the position that was being taken be some British diplomats. In many American negotiations with Russia and others, there are hard liners who believe that the negotiators want too much to preserve peace and are not sufficiently willing to go to war for the nation’s principles and honor. As this quotation shows, this is not just an American phenomenon, but in almost all nations there are hard liners critical of all international negotiations and fearing that a desire for an agreement will undermine the positions that should be taken. This is an example where the hard liners were on the non American side.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. His view was that the quality of statesmanship at the time was bellicose and imperialistic. We had annexed Puerto Rico and Cuba and then occupied the Philippines. He argued that if we did not have the bombastic and expansionist statesmen like McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, we would not need so much armament to back them up.
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.
