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Quotes About Spartans

If you aim for parody right off the bat and it misses, no offense to the filmmakers, but it is Meet the Spartans.
~ Adam McKay
The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning; Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air. And he that stands will die for nought, and home there's no returning. The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.
~ A.E. Housman
The Spartans] ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the quoit, and casting the dart, to the end that the fruit they conceived might, in strong and healthy bodies, take firmer root and find better growth, and withal that they, with this greater vigour, might be the more able to undergo the pains of childbearing.
~ Plutarch
The Spartans] should not make war often, or long, with the same enemy, lest that they should train and instruct them in war, by habituating them to defend themselves.
~ Plutarch
When someone asked Demaratus why the Spartans disgrace those who throw away their shields but not those who abandon their breastplates or helmets, he said that they put the latter on for their own sakes but the shield for the sake of the whole line.
~ Plutarch
What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
We don't do psyop. We've never worked with Spartans before. And we're definitely not trained for this spook stuff. But how hard can it be? They were ODSTs. They could do anything. It was all about the right attitude—a commando's state of mind. "Hi, BB," Mal said. "Take us to Hinge-head World, then.
~ Karen Traviss
Those two overarching concerns are these: we Athenians are concerned above all with improvement; the Spartans seek only – stasis. Two opposite objectives. If
~ David Deutsch
A short, glorious life in service of a greater good - say, the life of the Spartans at Thermopylae, or the pilots in the Battle of Britain, of whom Winston Churchill said 'Never have so many owed so much to so few,' - that is worth praising. But for glory alone? I think not.
~ Tim O'Reilly
Remember us, Should any free soul come across this place, In all the countless centuries yet to be, May our voices whisper to you from the ageless stones, Go tell the Spartans, passerby: That here by Spartan law, we lie.
~ Frank Miller
Glory?! Have you gone MAD? There's no glory to be had now! Only retreat -- or surrender -- or death! That's an easy chose for us, arcadian! SPARTANS NEVER RETREAT! SPARTANS NEVER SURRENDER!
~ Frank Miller
This was what the Spartans had most dreaded for centuries. Now it came to pass.
~ Roderick Beaton
compelling the Spartans to grant them their liberty as an autonomous city-state?
~ Roderick Beaton
The Spartans would never afterwards sign up to any treaty that included recognition of Messene as a free polis.
~ Roderick Beaton
But there was a barb, too. The 'Lacedaemonians'—the Spartans—were the only Greeks who had refused to join Philip's 'Common State
~ Roderick Beaton
This had been the number of Spartans killed during the defence of the pass of Thermopylae in 480 BCE
~ Roderick Beaton
This meant there was nothing the Spartans could do to prevent their enemies from being supplied by sea.
~ Roderick Beaton
Should the main line of defence be drawn at the Isthmus of Corinth, as the Spartans proposed?
~ Roderick Beaton
I love 'Gladiator' and '300.'
~ Jason Kidd
Every other Spartan on the field charged as well, hundreds of half-camouflaged armored figures, running and firing at the dazed Jackals, appearing as a wave of ghost warriors, half liquid, half shadow, part mirage, part nightmare. They screamed a battle cry, momentarily drowning the sound of gunfire and explosion. Tom yelled with them--for the fallen, for his friends, and for the blood of his enemies.
~ Eric Nylund
Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
~ Simonides
For what can be more noble than to slay oneself? Not literally. Not with a blade in the guts. But to extinguish the selfish self within, that part which looks only to its own preservation, to save its own skin. That, I saw, was the victory you Spartans had gained over yourselves. That was the glue. It was what you had learned and it made me stay, to learn it too.
~ Steven Pressfield
Persian envoy our arrows will black out the sun... Dienekes of the Spartans..Good, then we'll fight in the shade.
~ Steven Pressfield
Fear conquers fear. This is how we Spartans do it, counterpoising to fear of death a greater fear: that of dishonor. Of exclusion from the pack.
~ Steven Pressfield