# Quote — Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

> They have discovered that the length of time we have now been in commission has rotted our ships and wasted our crews, and that with the completeness of our crews and the soundness of the pristine efficiency of our navy has departed. For it is impossible for us to haul our ships ashore and dry them out because the enemy's vessels being as many or more than our own, we are constantly anticipating an attack.

- 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_VII) ([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/they-have-discovered

## More from this book

> Ignorance produces rashness, reflection timidity

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> 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?

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> 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)