“Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.”
― Pericles, as told by Thucydides

Pericles was a prominent and influential Greek statesman, orator and general of Athens during the Golden Age—specifically the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. Wikipedia

Born: 494 BC, Holargos, Greece

Died: 429 BC, Athens, Greece

Parents: Xanthippus, Agariste

Children: Pericles the Younger, Paralus, Xanthippus

Books: Epitaphius, Pericles’ funeral oration: Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War, Book II, xxxv-xlvi

Pericles

Pericles (Greek: Περικλῆς; ca. 495 BC – 429 BC) was an influential and important leader of Athens during the Athenian Golden Age (specifically, between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars), from the Alcmaeonidae family. The period from 461 BC to 379 BC is sometimes known as “The Age of Pericles”.

Quotes

• The whole Earth is the Sepulchre of famous men; and their story is not graven only on Stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men’s lives.
  • As quoted in A Brief and True Report concerning Williamsburg in Virginia by Rutherford Goodwin (1941), p. 125

• Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.
  • As quoted in Homage to Greece (1943)

• Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now. We do not need the praises of a Homer, or of anyone else whose words may delight us for the moment, but the estimation of facts will fall short of what is really true.
  • As quoted in Eternal Greece (1961) by Rex Warner, p. 34

• Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it.
  • As quoted in The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper (1966). Book II, chapter 40.

• Time is the wisest counselor of all
  • As quoted in Until Tomorrow Comes (1979) by Orville E. Kelly, p. 160

• What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.
  • As quoted in Flicker to Flame : Living with Purpose, Meaning, and Happiness (2006) by Jeffrey Thompson Parker, p. 118
  • This quotation is likely a modern paraphrasing of a longer passage from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, II.43.3. (http://en.allexperts.com/q/Greek-2004/2009/3/Pericles-1.htm)

• We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.
  • Pericles commenting the participation of Athenian citizens in politics, as quoted in Models of Democracy (2006) by David Held, Stanford University Press, p. 14. Book II, chapter 40.