Polybius Quotes

#1. Those who know how to win are much more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories.

Polybius

#2. We can profit only by our own misfortunes and those of others. The former, though they may be the more beneficial, are also the more painful; let us turn, then, to the latter.

Polybius

#3. On any occasion when one can discover the cause of events, one should not resort to the gods.

Polybius

#4. The government will take the fairest of names, but the worst of realities
mob rule.

Polybius

#5. All things are subject to decay and change ...

Polybius

#6. There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.

Polybius

#7. From this I conclude that the best education for the situations of actual life consists of the experience we acquire from the study of serious history. For it is history alone which without causing us harm enables us to judge what is the best course in any situation or circumstance.

Polybius

#8. When the ancients said a work well begun was half done, they meant to impress the importance of always endeavoring to make a good beginning.

Polybius

#9. For peace, with justice and honor, is the fairest and most profitable of possessions, but with disgrace and shameful cowardice, it is the most infamous and harmful of all.

Polybius

#10. Can any one be so indifferent or idle as not to care to know by what means, and under what kind of polity, almost the whole inhabited world was conquered and
brought under the dominion of the single city of Rome, and that too within a period of not quite fifty-three years?

Polybius

#11. The mob is easily led and may be moved by the smallest force, so that its agitations have a wonderful resemblance to those of the sea.

Polybius

#12. If history is deprived of the Truth, we are left with nothing but an idle, unprofitable tale.

Polybius

#13. A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible.

Polybius

#14. Nor ought we ever to allow any growing power to acquire such a degree of strength as to be able to tear from us, without resistance, our natural, undisputed rights.

Polybius

#15. Monarchy degenerates into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into savage violence and chaos.

Polybius

#16. Knowing how to win is the first step. We must also know how to make use of our victories.

Polybius

#17. For the mob, habituated to feed at the expense of others, and to have its hopes of a livelihood in the property of its neighbors, as soon as it has got a leader sufficiently ambitious and daring, being excluded by poverty from the sweets of civil honors, produces a reign of mere violence.

Polybius

#18. [There can be no] rational administration of government when good men are held in the same esteem as bad ones.

Polybius

#19. The glorious memory of brave men is continually renewed; the fame of those who have performed any noble deed is never allowed to die; and the renown of those who have done good service to their country becomes a matter of common knowledge to the multitude, and part of the heritage of posterity.

Polybius