Alexander - The Burden of Power

"“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.”
― Thucydides

""Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."" Shakespeare

""In light of the current situation, there is no other way out. It is like riding on the back of a tiger and finding it hard to get off. The only way out is to kill it.""
Wen Jiao

""Paradise is under the shades of swords."" Bukhari


Alexander the Great, perhaps the most commanding leader in history, united his empire and his army by the titanic force of his will. His death at the age of thirty-two spelled the end of that unity.“ According to the legend, Alexander predicted on his deathbed that a great funeral contest would be held over his tomb. But even he might not have believed that, within a day of his demise the two main branches of the army would draw weapons on each other over his very corpse. The speed of the unraveling, the scale of the breakdown of trust and order, was breathtaking. The saving grace for the Macedonians was that events at Babylon were moving faster than the messengers reporting them to the world. Provinces that might have profited from the disorder, subject peoples that might have rebelled, did not yet even know that Alexander was dead.”
“There is a verb, phthanō, in ancient Greek that denotes the taking of preemptive action, especially where one harms an enemy to prevent that enemy from doing harm. The safety of the monarch justified the elimination even of anticipated threats. But the murder of the Persian princesses by Roxanne and Perdiccas took this logic to a new extreme. Heirs to the throne had been rubbed out before, but killing women to prevent them from bearing hears was unprecedented.”
“Once this logic of prophthasia was invoked it was hard to limit how it was applied. The violence is seemed to license would in years to come, claim the lives of all the women who shared Alexander’s blood or who had shared his bed.”
James Romm, Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the Bloody Fight for His Empire

“Alexander’s top generals were about to tangle with one of history’s toughest teenage girls.”

""Power grows out of the barrel of a gun"" - Mao Zedong

“Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

“When one is deprived of ones liberty, one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the shackles on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it.”
― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

“In general, the men of lower intelligence won out. Afraid of their own shortcomings and of the intelligence of their opponents, so that they would not lose out in reasoned argument or be taken by surprise by their quick-witted opponents, they boldly moved into action. Their enemies, on the contrary, contemptuous and confident in their ability to anticipate, thought there was no need to take by action what they could win by their brains.”
― Thucydides

“Men who are capable of real action first make their plans and then go forward without hesitation while their enemies have still not made up their minds.”
― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

“Peace is an armistice in a war that is continuously going on.”
― Thucydides

“Three of the greatest failings, want of sense, of courage, or of vigilance.”
― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”
Thucydides

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons. And they will follow you into the deepest valley.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“When strong, avoid them. If of high morale, depress them. Seem humble to fill them with conceit. If at ease, exhaust them. If united, separate them. Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.”
― Sun Tzu

“Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.” – Niccolo Machiavelli

“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.” – Niccolo Machiavelli

“Everyone who wants to know what will happen ought to examine what has happened: everything in this world in any epoch has their replicas in antiquity.” – Niccolo Ma