Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
1928
AUTHOR:
Livy (59 B.C.–A.D. 17)
QUOTATION:
Thus, if there is anyone who is confident that he can advise me as to the best advantage of the state in this campaign which I am about to conduct, let him not refuse his services to the state, but come with me into Macedonia. I will furnish him with his sea-passage, with a horse, a tent, and even travel-funds. If anyone is reluctant to do this and prefers the leisure of the city to the hardships of campaigning, let him not steer the ship from on shore.
ATTRIBUTION:
LIVY, book 44, chapter 22.—Livy, trans. Alfred C. Schlesinger, vol. 13, p. 161 (1951).
Lucius Aemilius Paulus is addressing the people at a public meeting.
President Franklin Roosevelt attacked armchair generals by citing this and preceding passages at his press conference, March 17, 1942: “Being of an historical turn of mind, [I figured] that probably some poor devil had gone through this process of annoyance in past years, some previous time in history, so I went quite far back and I found [Lucius Aemilius] … it sounds as if it were written in 1942.”—The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1942, p. 166 (1950).
