Sparta Quotes:

Little Sparta is a garden in the traditional sense. It is perhaps not like other modern gardens, but I think that other times would have had no difficulty with it.

- Ian Hamilton Finlay

topic: Garden, Thinking, Sparta

A traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedaemonian, "I do not believe you can do as much." "True," said he, "but every goose can."

- Plutarch

source: Plutarch (1871). “Plutarch's Morals”, p.433

topic: Believe, Long, Sparta

Foreign lady once remarked to the wife of a Spartan commander that the women of Sparta were the only women in the world who could rule men. "We are the only women who raise men," the Spartan lady replied.

- Plutarch

topic: Men, Wife, Sparta

A Spartan woman, as she handed her son his shield, exhorted him saying, "As a warrior of Sparta come back with your shield or on it."

- Plutarch

topic: Warrior, Son, Sparta

Come back with your shield - or on it

- Plutarch

topic: Greek, Sparta, Shields

We have the ability to be the Athens of modern times as opposed to the militaristic Sparta. I remind you that the Athenians wrote poetry. The Spartans did not.

- Rita Mae Brown

source: Rita Mae Brown (1987). “Poems”

topic: Sparta, Athens, Modern, Modern Times, Athenians

We are on the path toward becoming the Sparta of the 21st century, armed to the teeth and without the capacity to care for our own people.

- Dennis Kucinich

topic: People, Teeth, Sparta

Probably the hardest thing to do was the beginning of the movie ["300"], I think, when we were in Sparta and all that - just getting in the groove.

- Zack Snyder

topic: Thinking, Sparta, Groove, Hardest Thing To Do

The daughters of Sparta are never at home! They mingle with the young men in wrestling matches...

- Euripides

topic: Daughter, Home, Wrestling, Sparta

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!

- Bettany Hughes

topic: Wall, War, Heart, Sparta

So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

- Theodore Roosevelt

topic: Humor, Soul, Victory, Inspiration And Motivation, Special Operations

I am firmly convinced, therefore, that to set up a republic which is to last a long time, the way to set about it is to constitute it as Sparta and Venice were constituted; to place it in a strong position, and so to fortify it that no one will dream of taking it by a sudden assault; and, on the other hand, not to make it so large as to appear formidable to its neighbors. It should in this way be able to enjoy its form of government for a long time. For war is made on a commonwealth for two reasons: to subjugate it, and for fear of being subjugated by it.

- Niccolo Machiavelli

source: "Discourses on Livy" by Niccolò Machiavelli, book 1, ch. 3, as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick, 1517.

topic: Dream, Art, Strong, Sparta

Only Spartan women give birth to real men.

- Gorgo, Queen of Sparta

topic: Real, Men, Giving, Sparta

Being asked where in Greece he saw good men , he replied, "'Good men nowhere, but good boys at Sparta.

- Diogenes

topic: Boys, Men, Good Man, Good Boy, Sparta

The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.

- Thucydides

source: Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert B. Strassler (2008). “The Landmark Thucydides”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

topic: War, Growth, Alarms, Athenians, Sparta

Look at The Iliad, there's all this stuff about men loving children. The King of Sparta was the most brutal warrior of ancient Greece, and the only thing he liked to do was horse around with kids when he was back from slaughtering. One thing that feminism revealed is that being a distant patriarchal figure was not something men wanted to be. They want to be more involved in the lives of their children, and you can see that once they're allowed to have that connection, they crave it.

- Stephen Marche

topic: Horse, Kings, Children, Loving Children, Ancient Greece

"Godling? Demigod?" Lysis nearly howled. "You'd be beaten black and blue in Thebes, and staked out overnight for claims like that. In Sparta, the secret police would ambush you, violate you, skin you alive and use your skull for a drinking cup."

- Janet Morris

topic: God, Drinking, Skulls, Ambush, Demigods

An armed republic submits less easily to the rule of one of its citizens than a republic armed by foreign forces. Rome and Sparta were for many centuries well armed and free. The Swiss are well armed and enjoy great freedom. Among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible. It is not reasonable to suppose that one who is armed will obey willingly one who is unarmed; or that any unarmed man will remain safe among armed servants.

- Niccolo Machiavelli

topic: Men, Rome, Evil, Great Freedom, Swiss

Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.

- Niccolo Machiavelli

topic: Gun, Eight, Rome, Sparta

Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a democracy in your own house."

- Plutarch

source: "Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders". 57 Lycurgus. "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th edition", 1919.

topic: Beautiful, Fashion, Hair, Countrymen, Long Hair

Sparta must be regarded as the first völkisch state. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more human than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject.

- Adolf Hitler

topic: Children, Sick, Insanity, Sparta

It is the teaching of the Bible and of sound Political ethics that the education of children belongs to the sphere of the family and is the duty of the parents. The theory that the children of the Commonwealth are the charge of the Commonwealth is a pagan one, derived from heathen Sparta and Platoís heathen republic, and connected by regular, logical sequence with legalized prostitution and the dissolution of the conjugal tie.

- Robert Dabney

topic: Education, Children, Plato, Heathen, Conjugal

Julian was the son of Diokles of Sparta, also known as Diokles the Butcher. That man made the Marquis de Sade look like Ronald McDonald. (Ben)

- Sherrilyn Kenyon

source: Sherrilyn Kenyon (2009). “Fantasy Lover”, p.144, Hachette UK

topic: Son, Men, Mcdonalds, Ronald Mcdonald, Sparta

What made the war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.

- Thucydides

topic: War, History, Growth, Sparta

How much education may reconcile young people to pain and sufference, the examples of Sparta do sufficiently shew; and they who have once brought themselves not to think bodily pain the greatest of evils, or that which they ought to stand most in fear of, have made no small advance toward virtue.

- John Locke

source: John Locke (1727). “The works of John Locke ...”, p.52

topic: Pain, Thinking, Evil, Bodily Pain, Sparta

When a rapidly rising power rivals an established ruling power, trouble ensues. In 11 of 15 cases in which this has occurred in the past 500 years, the result was war. The great Greek historian Thucydides identified these structural stresses as the primary cause of the war between Athens and Sparta in ancient Greece. In his oft-quoted insight, "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable."

- Graham T. Allison

topic: War, Stress, Past, Ancient Greece, Sparta

In Sparta, paintings have been taken out of certain walls by cutting through the bricks, then have been placed in wooden frames, and so brought to the Comitium to adorn the aedileship of [C. Visellius] Varro and [C. Licinius] Murena.

- Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

source: "De architectura (Ten Books on Architecture)". Book by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Book II, Chapter VIII, Section 9), circa 15 BC.

topic: Wall, Taken, Cutting, Sparta

In all times and in all places--in Constantinople, northwestern Zambia, Victorian England, Sparta, Arabia, . . . medieval France,Babylonia, . . . Carthage, Mahenjo-Daro, Patagonia, Kyushu, . . . Dresden--the time span between childhood and adulthood, however fleeting or prolonged, has been associated with the acquisition of virtue as it is differently defined in each society. A child may be good and morally obedient, but only in the process of arriving at womanhood or manhood does a human being become capable of virtue--that is, the qualities of mind and body that realize society's ideals.

- Louise J. Kaplan

topic: Children, Childhood, Mind, Carthage, Zambia

I couldn’t miss Percy’s fifteenth birthday,” Poseidon said. “Why, if this were Sparta, Percy would be a man today!” "That’s true,” Paul said. “I used to teach ancient history.” Poseidon’s eyes twinkled. “That’s me. Ancient history.

- Rick Riordan

source: "Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth". Book by Rick Riordan, books.google.ru. March 5, 2009.

topic: Eye, Men, Missing, Poseidon, Ancient History