A Quote by Thucydides

It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.

Thucydides

Quote Topics

City Make Men Ships Walls

Quote Author

Thucydides
Greek - Historian
460 BC - 395 BC

It is not the walls that make the city, but the people who live within them. The walls of London may be battered, but the spirit of the Londoner stands resolute and undismayed.

George VI

Not houses finely roofed or the stones of walls well builded, nay nor canals and dockyards make the city, but men able to use their opportunity.

Alcaeus

Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war.

Aristophanes

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get there. That's how I saw it, and see it still.

Ronald Reagan

Do you know what Agelisas said, when he was asked why the great city of Lacedomonie was not girded with walls? Because, pointing out the inhabitants and citizens of the city, so expert in military discipline and so strong and well armed: "Here," he said, "are the walls of the city," meaning that there is no wall but of bones, and that towns and cities can have no more secure nor stronger wall than the virtue of their citizens and inhabitants.

Francois Rabelais

When ships to sail the void between the stars have been built, there will step forth men to sail these ships.

Johannes Kepler

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

Epicurus

You're mistaken; men of sense often learn much from their enemies. Prudence is the best safeguard. This principle cannot be learnt from a friend: but an enemy extorts it immediately. It is from their foes and not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. And this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties.

Aristophanes

We live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns.

Aaron Sorkin

Son, we live in a world that has walls and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You!?

Jack Nicholson

There are silver ships There are gold ships, But there are no ships Like friendships.

W Mitchell

Here ends the story of a ship, but there will always be other ships, for we are an island race. Through all our centuries, the sea has ruled our destiny. There will always be other ships and men to sail in them. It is these men, in peace or war, to whom we owe so much. Above all victories, beyond all loss, in spite of changing values in a changing world, they give to us, their countrymen, eternal and indomitable pride.

Noel Coward

You can’t bounce off the walls If there are no walls: outdoor schools make kids happier—and smarter

David Sobel

O pity the dead that are dead, but cannot make the journey, still they moan and beat against the silvery adamant walls of life's exclusive city.

D. H. Lawrence

For the Spartans, it wasn’t walls or magnificent public buildings that made a city; it was their own ideals. In essence, Sparta was a city of the head and the heart. And it existed in its purest form in the disciplined march of a hoplite phalanx on their way to war!