Sparta Quotes

A Spartan woman, as she handed her son his shield, exhorted him saying, "As a warrior of Sparta come back with your shield or on it."

Theirs is a Spartan morality. Not the corruption but the discovery that constitutes the crime. Instead of applauding the investigators, they make war on the investigation. Instead of condemning the exposed and praising the exposure, they praised the exposed and condemned the exposure

Come and get them.

The Spartans do not inquire how many the enemy are, but where they are.

The boundaries of Sparta are on the points of our spears…. No Spartan woman has ever seen the smoke of the enemy’s camp..

I couldn’t miss Percy’s fifteenth birthday,” Poseidon said. “Why, if this were Sparta, Percy would be a man today!” "That’s true,” Paul said. “I used to teach ancient history.” Poseidon’s eyes twinkled. “That’s me. Ancient history.

Come back with your shield - or on it

The most important thing Spartans must learn is to know how to govern, and to be governed

Germany is the new Sparta. The same spirit of national discipline and self-sacrifice which earned for a few thousand inhabitants of a small Greek city-state an enduring place in history is being reproduced here by 67,000,000 of what are in some ways the most intelligent, industrious and high-spirited, and hardy people in the world. The last two years have witnessed here a political process as profound and far-reaching in its effects as the French Revolution. Germany has set a new pace of human endeavor. She has acquired a national momentum without precedent in political dynamics.

A traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedaemonian, "I do not believe you can do as much." "True," said he, "but every goose can."

Marry good men and bear good sons.

Go, stranger, and to Lacedaemon [Sparta] tell That here, obeying her laws, we fell.

Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a democracy in your own house."

These are the walls of Sparta. Cities should be walled with the courage of the inhabitants.

Being asked where in Greece he saw good men, he replied, "Good men nowhere, but good boys at Sparta."

In one day he [Lycurgus] eradicated from Sparta all wealth and sumptuousness; he put together all the property of all the inhabitants, then divided it equally among them; he prohibited the use of money and all the activities for which wealth is sought: sumptuous display, banquets, many servants, luxurious clothes and fine houses.

Boys should learn that which they will use when men.

The Spartan principle of "calling that which is just, equal; not that which is equal, just.

We are on the path toward becoming the Sparta of the 21st century, armed to the teeth and without the capacity to care for our own people.

The Peloponnesian War turns out to be no dry chronicle of abstract cause and effect. No, it is above all an intense, riveting, and timeless story of strong and weak men, of heroes and scoundrels and innocents too, all caught in the fateful circumstances of rebellion, plague, and war that always strip away the veneer of culture and show us for what we really are.

When a benevolent mind contemplates the republic of Lycurgus, its admiration is mixed with a degree of horror.

Probably the hardest thing to do was the beginning of the movie ["300"], I think, when we were in Sparta and all that - just getting in the groove.

Foreign lady once remarked to the wife of a Spartan commander that the women of Sparta were the only women in the world who could rule men. "We are the only women who raise men," the Spartan lady replied.

We have the ability to be the Athens of modern times as opposed to the militaristic Sparta. I remind you that the Athenians wrote poetry. The Spartans did not.

It is not the places which grace men, but men the places.