Titus Livius Quotes

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out.

Let no man, therefore, lose heart from thinking that he cannot do what others have done before him; for, as I said in my Preface, men are born, and live, and die, always in accordance with the same rules.

For a Monarchy readily becomes a Tyranny, an Aristocracy an Oligarchy, while a Democracy tends to degenerate into Anarchy.

Men of outstanding ability are more likely to lack the power of controlling their own people than of defeating an enemy in battle.

For a Monarchy readily becomes a Tyranny, an Aristocracy an Oligarchy, while a Democracy tends to degenerate into Anarchy. So that if the founder of a State should establish any one of these three forms of Government, he establishes it for a short time only, since no precaution he may take can prevent it from sliding into its contrary, by reason of the close resemblance which, in this case, the virtue bears to the vice.

This above all makes history useful and desirable; it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.

Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shaksepeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important.

I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important.” “You

Cornelius Tacitus when he says, that “men are readier to pay back injuries than benefits, since to requite a benefit is felt to be a burthen, to return an injury a gain.

for when religion is once established you may readily bring in arms; but where you have arms without religion it is not easy afterwards to bring in religion. We

Wherefore, unless things be put on a sound footing by some one ruler who lives to a very advanced age, or by two virtuous rulers succeeding one another, the city upon their death at once falls back into ruin; or, if it be preserved, must be so by incurring great risks, and at the cost of much blood. For

hardly any ruler lives so long as to have time to accustom to right methods a city which has long been accustomed to wrong. Wherefore,

THE HISTORY OF ROME. BY TITUS LIVIUS.

Many difficulties which nature throws our way, may be smoothed away by the exercise of intelligence.” — TITUS LIVIUS

I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shaksepeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important.

...these republics [the German city states] in which a free and pure government is maintained will not suffer any of their citizens either to be, or to live as gentlemen; but on the contrary, while preserving strict equality among themselves, are bitterly hostile to all those gentlemen and lords who dwell in their neighbourhood; so that if by chance any of these fall into their hand, they put them to death, as the chief promoters of corruption and the origin of all disorders. But to make plain what I mean when I speak of gentlemen, I say that those are so to be styled who live in opulence and idleness on the revenues of their estates, without concerning themselves with the cultivation of these estates, or incurring any other fatigue for their support. - Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius

But when they had to form a particular judgment on the men of their own party, they recognized their defects, and decided that individually no one of them was deserving of what, collectively, they seemed entitled to; and being ashamed of them, turned to bestow their honours on those who deserved them. Of

In this passage we are taught how hateful a thing is calumny in all free States, as, indeed, in every society, and how we must neglect no means which may serve to check it. And there can be no more effectual means for checking calumny than by affording ample facilities for impeachment, which is as useful in a commonwealth as the other is pernicious. And between them there is this difference, that calumny needs neither witness, nor circumstantial proof to establish it, so that any man may be calumniated by any other; but not impeached; since impeachment demands that there be substantive charges made, and trustworthy evidence to support them.

Ne kadar az korkarsak, o kadar az tehlikedeyiz.

There is always more spirit in attack than in defense.

Whether this has ever happened I know not, nor whether it ever can happen. For we see, as I have said a little way back, that a city which owing to its pervading corruption has once begun to decline, if it is to recover at all, must be saved not by the excellence of the people collectively, but of some one man then living among them, on whose death it at once relapses into its former plight; as happened with Thebes, in which the virtue of Epaminondas made it possible while he lived to preserve the form of a free Government, but which fell again on his death into its old disorders; the reason being that hardly any ruler lives so long as to have time to accustom to right methods a city which has long been accustomed to wrong.

The Romans, accordingly, admiring the prudence and virtues of Numa, assented to all the measures which he recommended. This, however, is to be said, that the circumstance of these times being deeply tinctured with religious feeling, and of the men with whom he had to deal being rude and ignorant, gave Numa better facility to carry out his plans, as enabling him to mould his subjects readily to any new impression. And, doubtless, he who should seek at the present day to form a new commonwealth, would find the task easier among a race of simple mountaineers, than among the dwellers in cities where society is corrupt; as the sculptor can more easily carve a fair statue from a rough block, than from the block which has been badly shaped out by another.

You should not believe the words of angry men, whose speech is very loud and menacing, while their mind within them is as timid as possible: nor need you suppose that the most eloquent of men, Titus Livius, was right in describing somebody as being "of a great rather than a good disposition." The things cannot be separated: he must either be good or else he cannot be great, because I take greatness of mind to mean that it is unshaken, sound throughout, firm and uniform to its very foundation; such as cannot exist in evil dispositions. Such dispositions may be terrible, frantic, and destructive, but cannot possess greatness; because greatness rests upon goodness, and owes its strength to it. "Yet by speech, action, and all outward show they will make one think them great.

CHAPTER XXVI.—A new Prince in a City or Province of which he has taken Possession, ought to make Everything new. Whosoever becomes prince of a city or State, more especially if his position be so insecure that he cannot resort to constitutional government either in the form of a republic or a monarchy, will find that the best way to preserve his princedom is to renew the whole institutions of that State; that is to say, to create new magistracies with new names, confer new powers, and employ new men, and like David when he became king, exalt the humble and depress the great, "filling the hungry with good things, and sending the rich empty away." Moreover, he must pull down existing towns and rebuild them, removing their inhabitants from one place to another; and, in short, leave nothing in the country as he found it; so that there shall be neither rank, nor condition, nor honour, nor wealth which its possessor can refer to any but to him. And he must take example from Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander, who by means such as these, from being a petty prince became monarch of all Greece; and of whom it was written that he shifted men from province to province as a shepherd moves his flocks from one pasture to another. These indeed are most cruel expedients, contrary not merely to every Christian, but to every civilized rule of conduct, and such as every man should shun, choosing rather to lead a private life than to be a king on terms so hurtful to mankind. But he who will not keep to the fair path of virtue, must to maintain himself enter this path of evil. Men, however, not knowing how to be wholly good or wholly bad, choose for themselves certain middle ways, which of all others are the most pernicious, as shall be shown by an instance in the following Chapter.

I may add as a fourth reason, which diminishes the authority of prodigies, that there is no testimony for any, even those which have not been expressly detected, that is not opposed by an infinite number of witnesses; so that not only the miracle destroys the credit of testimony, but the testimony destroys itself. To make this the better understood, let us consider, that, in matters of religion, whatever is different is contrary; and that it is impossible the religions of ancient Rome, of Turkey, of Siam, and of China should, all of them, be established on any solid foundation. Every miracle, therefore, pretended to have been wrought in any of these religions (and all of them abound in miracles), as its direct scope is to establish the particular system to which it is attributed; so has it the same force, though more indirectly, to overthrow every other system. In destroying a rival system, it likewise destroys the credit of those miracles, on which that system was established; so that all the prodigies of different religions are to be regarded as contrary facts, and the evidences of these prodigies, whether weak or strong, as opposite to each other. According to this method of reasoning, when we believe any miracle of Mahomet or his successors, we have for our warrant the testimony of a few barbarous Arabians: And on the other hand, we are to regard the authority of Titus Livius, Plutarch, Tacitus, and, in short, of all the authors and witnesses, Grecian, Chinese, and Roman Catholic, who have related any miracle in their particular religion; I say, we are to regard their testimony in the same light as if they had mentioned that Mahometan miracle, and had in express terms contradicted it, with the same certainty as they have for the miracle they relate. This argument may appear over subtle and refined; but is not in reality different from the reasoning of a judge, who supposes, that the credit of two witnesses, maintaining a crime against any one, is destroyed by the testimony of two others, who affirm him to have been two hundred leagues distant, at the same instant when the crime is said to have been committed.

He wanted writers like Titus Livius (in English, Livy) to speak their minds on this subject without fear or favor.

Of the neighbouring princes, Syphax had been alienated after his interview with Scipio, and Masinissa had openly thrown off his allegiance and was now their bitterest enemy; Mago in Gaul was neither causing a rising against Rome nor attempting to join Hannibal, and Hannibal himself was no longer the man he was either in reputation or in strength.

Questo soprattutto v’è di salutare e di utile nella conoscenza della storia: il fatto che tu abbia sotto gli occhi gli insegnamenti d’ogni genere che sono riposti delle illustri memorie e che possa prenderne ciò che sia da imitare per te e per il tuo Stato e ciò che sia da evitare perché nel principio e turpe alla fine.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

Better late than never.

Hannibal under the double blow of so great a public and personal distress exclaimed: 'Now, at last, I see the destiny of Carthage plain!

The whole world stands to be engulfed. The destruction, when it is unleashed, will be unprecedented. The totalitarians in Russia, China, Iran and the Arab world are preparing for war. Now that Bush's position is collapsing and the Party of Outright Appeasement has begun its reign, the enemies of freedom see their chance. Cowardice and stupidity have conspired, and the result is "opportunity." Western progress has finally given the totalitarian regimes a generation of "last men," about whom Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote: "The earth hath become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small." The "last man" comes at the end, when civilization begins to die. And indeed, the Western democracies are dying. I am reminded of Titus Livius's description of Rome's descent into despotism as "the dark dawning of our modern day when we can neither endure our vices nor face the remedies needed to cure them." We congratulate ourselves on the interest-group demagogy that produces policy in the West, throwing up words like "democracy" and "freedom" when the reality of the situation is better described by words like "anarchy" and "licentiousness.