Ancient Greece Quotes

• The spirit of Greece, passing through and ascending above the world, hath so animated universal nature, that the very rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilds burst forth with it.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Rocks, World, Ascending

  Walter Savage Landor (1853). “The Works of Walter Savage Landor”, p.256

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• In many ways we are all sons and daughters of ancient Greece.

  Nia Vardalos

  Mother, Daughter, Son

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• The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

  Socrates

  Wise, Wisdom, Philosophy

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• He is the richest who is content with the least.

  Socrates

  Inspirational, Greek, Contentment

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

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• Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

  Aristotle

  Love, Life, Positive

  Attributed to Aristotle in Diogenes Laertius "The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers" translated by C. D. Yonge and Henry G. Bohn (p. 188), 1853.

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• Romantic Art: The Hearts Awakening - Bouguereau At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.

  Plato

  Love, Valentines Day, Art

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• Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.

  Steven Pressfield

  Lying, Passing By, Law

  Steven Pressfield (2000). “Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae”, Random House

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• The ideas of ancient Greece helped inspire America's founding fathers as they reached for democracy. Our revolutionary ideas helped inspire Greeks as they sought their own freedom.

  Barack Obama

  Father, Ideas, America

  Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece in Joint Press Conference, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. November 15, 2016.

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• What they forget is that, from Ancient Greece on, the people who returned from battle were either dead on their shields or stronger, despite and because of their scars.

  Paulo Coelho

  People, Battle, Stronger

  Paulo Coelho (2011). “The Witch of Portobello”, p.40, HarperCollins UK

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• Isn't it a remarkable coincidence almost everyone has the same religion as their parents ? And it always just happens to be the right religion. Religions run in families. If we'd been brought up in ancient Greece we would all be worshiping Zeus and Apollo. If we had been born Vikings we would be worshiping Wotan and Thor. How does this come about ? Through childhood indoctrination.

  Richard Dawkins

  Running, Childhood, Parent

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• In the Classical tradition, deriving from ancient Greece and Rome, beauty was perceived as the means by which the artist captured the viewer's eye in order to engage the viewer with truth and so inspire goodness.

  John Walford

  Beauty, Mean, Eye

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• In looking at these pots at the Field Museum, Alix [MacKenzie] and I both came to a conclusion individually but also collectively that the pots that really interested us were the pots that people had used in their everyday life, and we began to think - I mean, whether it was ancient Greece or Africa or Europe or wherever, the pots that people had used in their homes were the ones that excited us.

  Warren MacKenzie

  Mean, Home, Thinking

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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• We don't usually think of what we eat as a matter of ethics. Stealing, lying, hurting people - these acts are obviously relevant to our moral character. In ancient Greece and Rome, ethical choices about food were considered at least as significant as ethical choices about sex.

  Peter Singer

  Hurt, Sex, Lying

  Peter Singer, Jim Mason (2007). “The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter”, p.3, Rodale

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• No account of the Renaissance can be complete without some notice of the attempt made by certain Italian scholars of the fifteenth century to reconcile Christianity with the religion of ancient Greece.

  Walter Pater

  Italian, Renaissance, Ancient

  Walter Pater (2013). “The Renaissance”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• In ancient Greece, politics and the market were not decoupled.

  George Papandreou

  Ancient, Greece

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• Greek customs such as wine drinking were regarded as worthy of imitation by other cultures. So the ships that carried Greek wine were carrying Greek civilization, distributing it around the Mediterranean and beyond, one amphora at a time. Wine displaced beer to become the most civilized and sophisticated of drinks—a status it has maintained ever since, thanks to its association with the intellectual achievements of Ancient Greece.

  Tom Standage

  Drinking, Wine, Beer

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• The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece, and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which such activity is not taboo suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any sort of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic in the species.

  Alfred Kinsey

  Sex, Opposites, Culture

  Alfred C. Kinsey (1998). “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male”, p.660, Indiana University Press

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• I learned that along with the towering achievements of the cultures of ancient Greece and China there stood the culture of Africa, unseen and denied by the imperialist looters of Africa's material wealth.

  Paul Robeson

  Justice, Diversity, Achievement

  Paul Robeson (1998). “Here I Stand”, p.35, Beacon Press

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• Hercules,huh? Percy frowned. "That guy was like the Starbucks of Ancient Greece. Everywhere you turn--there he is.

  Rick Riordan

  Guy, Ancient, Starbucks

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• The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads — in the end — to the best within us.

  Jesse Owens

  Country, New York, Cities

  "People In America : Jesse Owens" by Barbara Dash, web.archive.org. June 7, 2002.

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• When a rapidly rising power rivals an established ruling power, trouble ensues. In 11 of 15 cases in which this has occurred in the past 500 years, the result was war. The great Greek historian Thucydides identified these structural stresses as the primary cause of the war between Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece. In his oft-quoted insight, "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable."

  Graham T. Allison

  War, Stress, Past

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• I read mostly historical fiction - lots of stuff set in ancient Rome and ancient Greece. I also liked sci-fi and fantasy: David Gemmell, Raymond E. Feist. It's a nice escape from the world. As much as I do love real-life stories, they can often make you hurt in a way I'd rather not hurt.

  Henry Cavill

  Hurt, Real, Nice

  Interview with Elvis Mitchell, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 31, 2013.

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• We are living in the era of the busybody. In ancient Greece, if a person wanted guidance, it involved a long, arduous expensive journey to consult the oracle at Delphi. Today, if you want guidance, all you have to do is unplug your ears.

  Margo Kaufman

  Journey, Long, Advice

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• But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome - people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Believe, Creativity, Rome

  "Do All Of Us Possess Genius?". Interview with Alison Stewart, www.npr.org. May 25, 2012.

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• In English the expression 'ancient Greece' includes the meaning of 'finished,' whereas for us Greece goes on living, for better or for worse; it is in life, has not expired yet.

  Budd Schulberg

  Expression, Goes On, Ancient

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