Polybius Greek Quotes & Sayings

But the habit patterns, inevitably, had survived. To the air, with a wry grin, he murmured, "How long, O Lord? How long?" In his private estimation: not long now. — John Brunner

My fav band is Rush. — Jean-Luc Bilodeau

When you find that your life is out of alignment with your grandest idea of yourself, seek to change it. — Neale Donald Walsch

Even political systems follow a form of rational tinkering, when people are rational hence take the better option: the Romans got their political system by tinkering, not by "reason." Polybius in his Histories compares the Greek legislator Lycurgus, who constructed his political system while "untaught by adversity," to the more experiential Romans, who, a few centuries later, "have not reached it by any process of reasoning [emphasis mine], but by the discipline of many struggles and troubles, and always choosing the best by the light of the experience gained in disaster. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Her flying machine was packed inside, wrapped in layers of oiled cloths. It was all she could carry. — Aya Ling

If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity.
If there's no relationship with nature then you become a killer;
then you kill baby seals, whales, dolphins, and man
either for gain, for "sport," for food, or for knowledge.
Then nature is frightened of you, withdrawing its beauty.
You may take long walks in the woods or camp in lovely places
but you are a killer and so lose their friendship.
You probably are not related to anything to your wife or your husband. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Though you work like mad to keep parts of you undiscovered, it is horrible to imagine that you will be completely successful. As the psychologist D.W. Winnicott wrote, It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

I don't want the viewer to be able to peel away the layers of my painting like the layers of an onion and find that all the blues are on the same level. — Chuck Close

It's interesting how when you walk into a room in LA there's a sense of what you walk in, as is sort of what you can do. So I spent a lot of time choosing different things to hopefully show people that maybe that's not the case. — Carla Gugino

All I have is all I need and all I need is all I have in this moment. — Byron Katie

Being a father ... I can't help feeling that, by comparison with being a mother, being a father is a rather abstract business. — J.M. Coetzee

Oriental marionette imitating an occidental gesture. — Joe Haldeman

Hope lies in what the book title says, finding love and community. — Hazel Rochman

Although he paid attention to the effectiveness of the Roman military system, Polybius believed that Rome's success rested far more on its political system. For him the Republic's constitution, which was carefully balanced to prevent any one individual or section of society from gaining overwhelming control, granted Rome freedom from the frequent revolution and civil strife that had plagued most Greek city-states. Internally stable, the Roman Republic was able to devote itself to waging war on a scale and with a relentlessness unmatched by any rival. It is doubtful that any other contemporary state could have survived the catastrophic losses and devastation inflicted by Hannibal, and still gone on to win the war. — Adrian Goldsworthy

The Alexandrian Library was a tragedy of some moment, for it was believed to contain the complete published works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, and a hundred others, who have come down to us in mangled form; full texts of the pre-Socratic philosophers, who survive only in snatches; and thousands of volumes of Greek, Egyptian, and Roman history, science, literature, and philosophy. — Will Durant