# Quote — Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

> Disdain is the privilege of those who, like us, have been assured by reflection of their superiority to their adversary. And where the chances are the same, knowledge fortifies courage by the contempt which is its consequence, its trust being placed, not in hope, which is the prop of the desperate, but in a judgment grounded upon existing resources, whose anticipations are more to be depended upon.

- Author: [Thucydides](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thucydides.md)
- Book: [History of the Peloponnesian War](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thucydides/history-of-the-peloponnesian-war.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thucydides#Book_II) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/thucydides/history-of-the-peloponnesian-war/disdain-is-the

## More from this book

> Ignorance produces rashness, reflection timidity

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thucydides/history-of-the-peloponnesian-war/ignorance-produces-rashness.md)

> By day certainly the combatants have a clearer notion, though even then by no means of all that takes place, no one knowing much of anything that does not does not go on in his own immediate neighborhood; but in a night engagement (and this was the only one that occurred between great armies during the war) how could anyone know anything for certain?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thucydides/history-of-the-peloponnesian-war/by-day-certainly.md)

> The dead lay unburied, and each man as he recognized a friend among them shuddered with grief and horror; while the living whom they were leaving behind, wounded or sick, were to the living far more shocking than the dead, and more to be pitied than those who had perished.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thucydides/history-of-the-peloponnesian-war/the-dead-lay.md)