Secretary Rubio’s Inspiring Words
For the Greeks of antiquity, the pursuit of excellence was the very principle of man’s existence. They organized all of civic life around contest and ambition and competition, and philosophy and poetry and sculpture and drama, in athletics and art, in war and statescraft.
The classical Greek city was an arena for great men to test and prove themselves, to hone their potential through perpetual struggle, to be the best, the strongest, the most beautiful, straining to inch ever closer to perfection.
Now I know that to modern ears, what I just described, this way of life may sound odd. It may even sound cruel. The ideal of many ideologies in our time is, frankly, become a world of perfect safety, a world devoid of risk or failure, where neither the glory of victory nor the shame of defeat.
Too often, these days, we build downwards. We design our standards to ensure that no one will lose. We preoccupy ourselves more with the comfort of the worst than the potential of the best. We hold the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average, the ordinary, the mediocre.
The men who made the Parthenon-they built upwards. They held that the highest and most noble aspiration in life was to surpass all others, to strive to be the best in all things. The ancient Greek city-states were filled with intense passion, rivalry, faction, and conflict. But from that constant struggle for distinction, from that came the great flowering of art, and philosophy, and political and intellectual energy, that would transform a collective of Mediterranean cities into the birthplace of the greatest civilization in the world-the Thumos, as the ancient Greeks called it, the fire of passion, strength, courage, pride, is the heart of great civilization.
Without it, nations lose their will to fight, the will to strive, the will to survive.
SECRETARY RUBIO: This thumos, as the Ancient Greeks called it – the fire of passion, strength, courage, pride – is the heart of great civilization. Without it, nations lose their will to fight, to strive, to survive. https://t.co/r5hfm550Zw
— Department of State (@StateDept) October 7, 2026