# Quote — Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

> Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries.

- 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_III) ([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/words-had-to-change

## 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)