Daily Inspiration Quote by Pericles

A swaggering line that doubles as a recruitment pitch. When Pericles insists, "We do not imitate, but are a model to others", he is doing what great democratic statesmen always do: turning civic self-regard into political glue. The sentence is built like a shield wall. First, it rejects the humiliating posture of the follower. Then it claims a higher status - not just excellence, but exemplarity. Athens isn't merely better; it's the template.

Context matters: this is Pericles in the Funeral Oration, speaking over the war dead early in the Peloponnesian War. The city is spending lives at scale, and he needs the living to believe those deaths purchase more than territory. The boast turns sacrifice into proof of civilization. If Athens is the model, then defending it becomes a duty not only to neighbors and allies, but to history itself.

The subtext is more calculating. "We" is doing heavy lifting: it flattens class conflict and factional rivalry into a single, unanimous people. It also preemptively reframes criticism. Complaints about inequality, empire, or demagoguery can be dismissed as petty noise against a grand civilizational project. And there's a quiet imperial logic inside the compliment: to be a model is to invite imitation, admiration, dependence. Athens is cast as the cultural center others orbit.

The line works because it is both descriptive and performative. It doesn't just assert Athenian uniqueness; it manufactures it, daring listeners to live up to the brand - and to keep paying for it in blood.