Victory breeds hatred. The defeated live in pain. Happily the peaceful live,
giving up victory and defeat.

war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for new weariness and new hatreds.

The oftener the choice fell upon old men, the oftener it became necessary to repeat it, and the more the trouble of such repetitions became sensible; electioneering took place; factions arose; the parties contracted ill blood; civil wars blazed forth; the lives of the citizens were sacrificed to the pretended happiness of the state; and things at last came to such a pass, as to be ready to relapse into their primitive confusion

In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society.

Thrice cursed are the weak whose insecurity makes them vile, for they shall serve and suffer.

Too many kings can ruin an army

victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.

Bad men rule by the feebleness of the ruled; and this is just; the triumph of weaklings would not be just.

In despotic governments wars are the effect of pride; but in those governments in which they become the means of taxation, they acquire thereby a more permanent promptitude.

The ruling classes constantly were enervated by the surfeit of goods and pleasures they had so ruthlessly monopolized for themselves. They had lapsed, too many of these insolent rulers and their agents, from a human to a distinctly simian level: like the apes, they snatched food for themselves, instead of sharing it with the group: like them, the more powerful claimed more than their share of women: like them, again, they were in a constant state of nettled aggression towards possible rivals. In short, they had alienated themselves from their distinctly human potentialities and in that sense, the real gains in power and wealth had led to a dead end: they produced no equivalent wealth of mind.

The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. ... The Nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the Government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The Government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of Nations has been the victim.

We hear very often declarations on the demoralizing tendency of war, but as much as I hate war, I cannot be of the opinion that frequent wars are so corrupting to human nature as long peaces.

(Sthenelaidas:) If they behaved well in the Persian War and are now behaving badly to us they ought to be punished twice over, because they were once good men and have become bad.
(Book 1 Chapter 86.1)

Civilization after civilization, it is the same. The world falls to tyranny with a whisper. The frightened are ever keen to bow to a perceived necessity, in the belief that necessity forces conformity, and conformity a certain stability. In a world shaped into conformity, dissidents stand out, are easily branded and dealt with. There is no multitude of perspectives, no dialogue. The victim assumes the face of the tyrant, self-righteous and intransigent, and wars breed like vermin. And people die.