Alexander The Great Quotes

The streets of New York and some wards of its venerable institutions were packed with people who, despite being entirely forsaken, had episodes of glory that made the career of Alexander the Great seem like a day in the life of a file clerk. ~ Mark Helprin

Of course, Alexander the Great was a hero, but why smash the chairs? ~ Nikolai Gogol

He stood between death and life as between night and morning, and thought with a soaring rapture, 'I am not afraid. ~ Mary Renault

When Alexander the Great addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, Diogenes replied Yes, stand a little out of my sunshine . ~ Diogenes

I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life. The calling of arms, I have followed from boyhood. I have never sought another.

I have known lovers, sired offspring, competed in games, and committed outrages when drunk. I have vanquished empires, yoked continents, been crowned as an immortal before gods and men. But always I have been a soldier. ~ Steven Pressfield

(The Hellenistic Age begins with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and ends in 30 BC, with the death of Cleopatra. It has been perhaps best defined as a Greek era in which the Greeks played no role.) ~ Stacy Schiff

An apt and true reply was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride. "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor." ~ Saint Augustine

When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: 'Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.' It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government. ~ Henry Hazlitt

In the foreign country, we call the past, crucifixion was a common punishment. It was invented by the Persians, carried back to Europe by Alexander the Great, and widely used in Mediterranean empires. ~ Steven Pinker

It seems likely that Jesus, being a scholarly young man, learned some Hebrew, but that's conjecture. It's more likely that Jesus spoke some Greek, as this language dominated the region after the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century. ~ Jay Parini

Holy shadows of the dead, I am not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed rivalry which brought sister nations and brother people to fight one another. I do not feel happy for this victory of mine. On the contrary, I would be glad, brothers, if I had all of you standing here next to me, since we are united by the same language, the same blood and the same visions.
[Addressing the dead Hellenes of the Battle of Chaeronea] ~ Alexander The Great

Speech is the pen and the sword of humankind and it is the foundation of their kingdom. Wherever the flag of speech waves, the most powerful armies are. defeated and scattered. In the arenas in which speech shouts out, the sounds of cannon balls become like the buzzing of bees. from behind the battlements on which the banner of speech has been raised, the sound of its drums are heard. In the precincts where its march reverberates, kings shake in their boots. The Master of Speech smashed to pieces many insurmountable walls, in the face of which Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and many others despaired or retread; and the pen of Speech, imparting and compliance, was saluted and praised. ~ M. Fethullah Gulen

My treasure lies in my friends . ~ Alexander The Great

The end and object of conquest is to avoid doing the same thing as the conquered. ~ Alexander The Great

I like to think I am the best there is at what I do, and so I have conquered the world like Alexander. But I don't believe I am the reincarnation of Alexander the Great. ~ Alex Spanos

Heaven cannot brook two suns, nor earth two masters. ~ Alexander The Great

The small Greek city-states could not understand what the organisation of a great empire and the movement of many thousands of men entailed: they themselves thought in terms of hundreds or at the most a few thousands. It would be well over a century until a Greece, unified under Alexander the Great, would have to tackle the problems of Empire. ~ Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford

I am dying with the help of too many physicians. ~ Alexander The Great

Do you believe in the existence of Socrates? Alexander the Great? Julius Caesar? If historicity is established by written records in multiple copies that date originally from near contemporaneous sources, there is far more proof for Christ's existence than for any of theirs. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

I dreamed of going to the top of Mount Elum like Alexander the Great to touch Jupiter and even beyond the valley. But, as I watched my brother running across the roof, flying their kites and skillfully flicking the strings back and forth to cut each other's down, I wondered hoe free a daughter could ever be. ~ Malala Yousafzai

As the invasion fleet sailed east across the Mediterranean, Napoleon would lie in bed reading and dictating to Bourrienne. His principal reading was from the Koran. Like Alexander the Great before him, he intended to absorb the religion of the people over whom he would rule. He insisted that, if necessary, he himself was willing to become a Muslim - an intention that, at least initially, he would show every sign of wishing to fulfill. However, it should also be noted that in Napoleon's shipboard library the Koran was shelved under "Politics." At the same time, he also busied himself with dictating his "proclamation" to the Egyptian people. ~ Paul Strathern

One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once. ~ Mary Renault

I want the little lassies who are thinking of going to a nightclub in Cardiff to stop to see what that guy's screaming for, or Grandma to put her knitting down to see why that guy's chatting about Alexander the Great. I'm after pulling in, whether it's in Manila, Beijing or whatever, the biggest possible audience. ~ Sid Waddell

The early and relatively sophisticated Egyptians understood that their civilization would be threatened if they bred with the Negroes to their south, so pharaohs went so far as "to prevent the mongrelization of the Egyptian race" by making it a death penalty-eligible offense to bring blacks into Egypt. The ancient Egyptians even constructed a fort on the Nile in central Egypt to prevent blacks from immigrating to their lands. In spite of the efforts by the Egyptian government to defend their civilization, blacks still came to Egypt as soldiers, slaves, and captives from other nations. By 1,500 B.C., half of the population of southern Egypt was of mixed blood, and by 688 B.C., societal progress had ended in Egypt when Taharka became the first mulatto pharaoh. By 332 B.C., Egypt had fallen when Alexander the Great conquered the region. ~ Kyle Bristow

I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.

{His teacher was the legendary philosopher Aristotle} ~ Alexander The Great

In my opinion, at least, the splendid achievements of Alexander are the clearest possible proof that neither strength of body, nor noble blood, nor success in war even greater than Alexander's own... that none of these things, I say, can make a man happy, unless he can win one more victory in addition to those the world thinks so great---the victory over himself. ~ Arrian

It may surprise you to learn that at this moment, Sunny resembled the famous Greek conqueror Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great lived more than two thousand years ago, and his last name was not actually "The Great." "The Great" was something that he forced people to call him, by bringing a bunch of soldiers into their land and proclaiming himself king. Besides invading other people's countries and forcing them to do whatever he said, Alexander the Great was famous for something called the Gordian Knot. The Gordian Knot was a fancy knot tied in a piece of rope by a king named Gordius. Gordius said that if Alexander could untie it, he could rule the whole kingdom. But Alexander who was too busy conquering places to learn how to untie knots, simply drew his sword and cut the Gordian Knot in two. This was cheating, of course, but Alexander had too many soldiers for Gordius to argue, and soon everybody in Gordium had to bow down to You-Know-Who the Great. Ever since then, a difficult problem can be called a Gordian Knot, and if you solve the problem in a simple way - even if the way is rude - you are cutting the Gordian Knot. ~ Lemony Snicket

Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service - but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay - and not much of at that; we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. As for our foreign troops - Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes - they are the best and stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia. And what, finally, of the two men in supreme command? You have Alexander, they - Darius! ~ Alexander The Great

If war is to have any meaning at all, its purpose must be to establish control over peoples and territories, and ultimately, this can be done only as Alexander the Great did it, on the ground. ~ T.R. Fehrenbach

About this time he had the sarcophagus and body of Alexander the Great brought forth from its shrine, and after gazing on it, showed his respect by placing upon it a golden crown and strewing it with flowers; and being then asked whether he wished to see the tomb of the Ptolemies as well, he replied, "My wish was to see a king, not corpses. ~ Suetonius

How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens. ~ Alexander The Great

Gays have always been in the military. Alexander the Great was originally Alexander the Fabulous. A gay man invented C-rations. He claims he could never talk anyone into the cilantro garnish. Obviously, gays were not allowed to design the outfits, because we never would have stayed with the earth tones for so long. ~ Kate Clinton

Alexander the Great, who said on his wedding night, It's only a nickname. Never got a dinner! ~ Red Buttons

If it was in the interest of Rome to extend her conquests towards the East, and to enter on the inheritance of Alexander the Great there in all its extent, the circumstances were never more favourable for doing so than in the year 716. ~ Theodor Mommsen

A horse must be a bit mad to be a good cavalry mount, and its rider must be completely so. ~ Steven Pressfield

Are there no more worlds that I might conquer? ~ Alexander The Great

Whilst the food we eat nowadays has much to be grateful to the likes of Marco Polo, Alexander the Great and Vasco De Gama, who would have introduced the tangy flavours of South Africa's Rainbow Cuisine on his way around the Cape of Good Hope to India, Arabic cuisine, with spices of cinnamon, cloves, saffron and ginger was a lot more enterprising than Western cooking at the time. The medley of colours that the spices offered the food had mystical meanings to the Arabs ~ Karl Wiggins

Like all men is distress,Gideon decided to do what Napoleon, what Shakespeare, what Alexander the Great would have done. There remained only the minor question, what is that? ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Don Quixote is not an imaginary person; he is as real as Alexander the Great. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

Those who do not understand war believe it contention between armies, friend against foe. No. Rather friend and foe duel as one against an unseen antagonist, whose name is Fear, and seek, even entwined in death, to mount to that promontory whose ensign is honor. ~ Steven Pressfield

There are so many worlds and I have not yet conquered even one. ~ Alexander The Great

This story began with a single, starving family, hunted and alone on the plains of Mongolia - and ends with Kublai Khan ruling an empire larger than that of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. Over just three generations, that is simply the greatest rags-to-riches tale in human history. ~ Conn Iggulden

Not all gays respond to the same stuff. Would Alexander the Great have loved Auntie Mame? ~ Bruce Bawer

There are no more worlds to conquer! ~ Alexander The Great

But to exercise the intellect the prince should read histories, and study there the actions of illustrious men, to see how they have borne themselves in war, to examine the causes of their victories and defeat, so as to avoid the latter and imitate the former; and above all do as illustrious man did, who took as an exemplar one who had been praised and famous before him, and whose achievements and deeds he always kept in his mind, as it is said Alexander the Great imitated Achilles, Caesar Alexander, Scipio Cyrus. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

I send you a kaffis of mustard seed, that you may taste and acknowledge the bitterness of my victory. ~ Alexander The Great

If we have not achieved our early dreams, we must either find new ones or see what we can salvage from the old. If we have accomplished what we set out to do in our youth, we need not weep like Alexander the Great that we have no more worlds to conquer. ~ Rosalynn Carter

Alexander the Great valued learning so highly, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge than to his father Philip for life. ~ Samuel Smiles

Alexander and Caesar have had this in common: to be loved and wept by the conquered, and to perish by the hands of their own countrymen. Such men have no country; they belong to the world. ~ Jules Michelet

We of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war ~ Alexander The Great

Now that the wars are coming to an end, I wish you to prosper in peace. May all mortals from now on live like one people in concord and for mutual advancement. Consider the world as your country, with laws common to all and where the best will govern irrespective of tribe. I do not distinguish among men, as the narrow-minded do, both among Greeks and Barbarians. I am not interested in the descendance of the citizens or their racial origins. I classify them using one criterion: their virtue. For me every virtuous foreigner is a Greek and every evil Greek worse than a Barbarian. If differences ever develop between you never have recourse to arms, but solve them peacefully. If necessary, I should be your arbitrator. ~ Alexander The Great

Remember, upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all." ― Alexander the Great ~ Alexander The Great

Alexander the Great found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave. ~ Diogenes Of Sinope

Are you still to learn that the end and perfection of our victories is to avoid the vices and infirmities of those whom we subdue? ~ Alexander The Great

I consider not what Parmenio should receive, but what Alexander should give. ~ Alexander The Great

Alexander III of Macedon is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of more different kinds than any other man of his time. ~ Will Cuppy

I have both held and beheld unlimited power and of it I know but one thing. It drives men mad.'
- Alexander the Great ~ Matthew Reilly

Warriors like Alexander the Great seek sovereignty over the soil; masters like Sri Yukteswar win a farther dominion - in men's souls. It ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

Your ancestors came to Macedonia and the rest of Hellas [Greece] and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury. I have been appointed leader of the Greeks, and wanting to punish the Persians I have come to Asia, which I took from you. ~ Alexander The Great

Every light is not the sun. ~ Alexander The Great

O Athenians, what toil do I undergo to please you! ~ Alexander The Great

I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion. ~ Alexander The Great

In the end, when it's over, all that matters is what you've done. ~ Alexander The Great

FLUELLEN-
Ay, he was porn at Monmouth, Captain Gower. What call you the town's name where Alexander the Pig was born!
GOWER-
Alexander the Great.
FLUELLEN-
Why, I pray you, is not pig great? the pig, or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the magnanimous, are all one reckonings, save the phrase
is a little variations. ~ William Shakespeare

At Achilles tomb, O fortunate youth, to have found Homer as the herald of your glory! ~ Alexander The Great

There is something noble in hearing myself ill spoken of, when I am doing well; ~ Alexander The Great

'Born to play? Hmmm. Probably Romeo ... or Hamlet, I guess. Also, I'd be a great Alexander the Great. ~ David Carradine

Upon the conduct of each determines the fate of all ~ Alexander The Great

Can it be, thought I, that my sole mission on earth is to destroy the hopes of others? Ever since I began to live and act, fate has somehow associated me with the last act of other people's tragedies, as if without me no one could either die or give way to despair! I have been the inevitable character who comes in at the final act, involuntarily playing the detestable role of the hangman or the traitor. What has been fate's object in all this? Has it destined me to be the author of middle-class tragedies and family romances
or a purveyor of tales for, say, the Reader's Library? Who knows? Are there not many who begin life by aspiring to end it like Alexander the Great, or Lord Byron, and yet remain petty civil servants all their lives? ~ Mikhail Lermontov

Do you not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that when there is such a vast multitude of them [worlds], we have not yet conquered one? ~ Alexander The Great

Childhood is bound like the Gordian knot with my memories of the Black Sea, and I still feel its waters welling up within me today. Sometimes these waters are leaden, as grey as the military ships that sail on their curved expanses, and sometimes they are blue as pigmented cobalt. Then would come dusk, when I would sit and watch the seabirds waver to shore, flitting from open waters to the quiet empty vastlands in darkening spaces behind me, the same birds Ovid once saw during his exile, perhaps; and the same waters the Argonauts crossed searching for the fleece of renewal.

And out in the distance, invisible, the towering heights of Caucasus, where once-bright memories of the fire-thief have transmuted into something weird and many-faceted, and beyond these, pitch-black Karabakh in dolorous Armenia. ~ Paul Christensen

You're like, both like, Alexander the Great.'
We can't both be Alexander.'
Well sometimes I think you're two side of the same coin, and I'm the metal in between. ~ Orson Scott Card

The mightiest kings have had their minions; Great Alexander loved Hephaestion, The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept; And for Patroclus, stern Achilles drooped. And not kings only, but the wisest men: The Roman Tully loved Octavius, Grave Socrates, wild Alcibiades. ~ Christopher Marlowe

A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not enough.
[Alexander's tombstone epitaph] ~ Alexander The Great

If his drunkenness had legs, it would be Alexander the Great and conquer the known world. Then it would puke for a week into a solid gold toilet it stole from Zeus's guest room. ~ Richard Kadrey

My parents didn't grow up here or anything. They chose to live in this nowhere town. Why? Because it was named after Hannibal of Carthage. Their basic train of thought was this: Hannibal's Rest? And we're naming our child after Alexander the Great? MARVELOUS. Ah, the history, it tickles.

Sometimes I wanted to beat my parents over the head with a frying pan. ~ Francesca Zappia

If Aristotle and his pupil Alexander the Great were brought back to life today, they would believe themselves in the country of the gods and not of men. Ten lives would not suffice Aristotle to assimilate all the knowledge that has been accumulated on earth since his death, and Alexander would perhaps be able to realize his dream and conquer the world. ~ Lev Shestov

There is more evidence that Jesus rose from the dead than there is that Julius Caesar ever lived or that Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three. ~ Billy Graham

Alexander the Great was not worried about what other people would think if he made a deal with a woman. It helped that the woman was very smart and knew how to benefit both sides by striking that deal. Ada of Caria negotiated with the Macedonian conqueror by making him her adoptive son and her heir. She got her power back and ruled for a total of nineteen years. ~ Ingrid De Haas

An army of sheep led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a sheep. ~ Alexander The Great

I do not steal victory. ~ Alexander The Great

Upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all. ~ Alexander The Great

No one writes better historical fiction than Steven Pressfield. The Afghan War that was waged by Alexander the Great 2000 years ago is eerily similar to the one that's being fought today. This book should be required reading for anyone who wants to better understand what American and Coalition forces are up against in one of history's most tribal and troubled regions. ~ Vince Flynn

There is nothing immpossible to him who will try ~ Alexander The Great

Alexander the Great slept with
'The Iliad' beneath his pillow.
Though I've never led an army,
I am a wanderer. I cradle
'The Odyssey' nights while the
moon is waning, as if it were
the sweet body of a woman. ~ Roman Payne

We were not told how Alexander the Great was the last person in history to successfully 'pacify' what would become Afghanistan, over 2,000 years ago. ~ Jake Wood

New Age spirituality purports to promote change – its mantra is 'transformation' – but, in reality, it endorses the status quo. It preaches changing oneself to accept the world as it is. New Agers are too busy with their affirmations and introspections to do anything like take direct action. Indeed, in some books the advice to unleash one's inner goddess turns out to be little more
than to bring back the old 'domestic goddess'. Using myth as one's personal charter is nothing new (as we saw in Chapter 3), but when Alexander the Great chose Achilles, the psychopathic hero of Homer's Iliad, to revere and emulate, he did so with action in mind. Alexander used classical myth as his 'life coach' and changed the world. New Agers use classical myth to ensure that
the spirit is soothed, the horoscope reassuring, and the house clean, but the world stays the same. ~ Helen Morales

Wars between states and people seem to have existed under all historical systems for as long as we have some recorded evidence. War is quite clearly not a phenomenon particular to the modern world-system. On the other hand, once again the technological achievements of capitalist civilization serve as much ill as good. One bomb in Hiroshima killed more people than whole wars in pre-modern times. Alexander the Great in his whole sweep of the Middle East could not compare in destructiveness to the impact of the Gulf War on Iraq and Kuwait. ~ Immanuel Wallerstein

The world was not big enough for Alexander the Great, but a coffin was. ~ Juvenal

I am involved in the land of a leonine and brave people, where every foot of the ground is like a well of steel, confronting my soldier. You have brought only one son into the world, but everyone in this land can be called an Alexander. ~ Alexander The Great

True love never has a happy ending, because there is no ending to true love. ~ Alexander The Great

Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both. ~ Marcus Aurelius

When Alexander The Great was alive the world was not big enough to contain his ambition but while Alexander chafed at the confines of the world in life, in death, "a coffin was enough. ~ Juvenal

It's happened many times before. Usually it results in an exceptional and gifted human. Some of the greatest figures in Earth's history were actually the product of humans and the Loric, including Buddha, Aristotle, Julius Ceasar, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein ... Aprodite, Apollo, Hermes, and Zeus were all real, and had one Loric parent ~ Pittacus Lore

The basic lesson of Indian history was already established. Material power like kingdoms, and kings, including Alexander the Great, comes and goes. But spiritual power, embodied in religion and caste and spiritual unity with Brahman, the changeless essence of the universe, lasts forever. Prime ~ Arthur Herman

Now you fear punishment and beg for your lives, so I will let you free, if not for any other reason so that you can see the difference between a Greek king and a barbarian tyrant, so do not expect to suffer any harm from me. A king does not kill messengers. ~ Alexander The Great

It is surely no coincidence that Napoleon's two greatest heroes were Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. In certain respects, he would outdo them both. ~ Saul David

Like Alexander the Great and Caesar, I'm out to conquer the world. But first I have to stop at Walmart and pick up some supplies. ~ Jarod Kintz

I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold… These are not invisible men. Poor Bruce. Poor frightened Bruce. Once upon a time you wanted to be a soldier.
Bruce, did you know that an openly gay Englishman was as responsible as any man for winning the Second World War? His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do - and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay. Why don't they teach any of this in the schools? If they did, maybe he wouldn't have killed himself and maybe you wouldn't be so terrified of who you are. The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all there - all through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth. And until we do that, and until we organize ourselves block by neighborhood by city by state into a united visible community that fights back, we're doomed. That's how I want to be defined: as one of the men who fought the war. ~ Larry Kramer

When we give someone our time, we actually give a portion of our life that we will never take back. ~ Alexander The Great