History of the Peloponnesian War

"Men of Sicily, I am neither of the least city nor of the most afflicted with war that am now to speak and to deliver the opinion which I take to conduce most to the common benefit of all Sicily.

Touching war, how calamitous a thing it is, to what end should a man, particularising the evils thereof, make a long speech before men that already know it? For neither doth the not knowing of them necessitate any man to enter into war, nor the fear of them divert any man from it, when he thinks it will turn to his advantage. But rather it so falls out that the one thinks the gain greater than the danger; and the other prefers danger before present loss.