“Nothing is impossible for the one who tries”;

“Fortune favours the brave”;

“The hardest war I ever waged was the war with my wife Olivia”;

“Wars depend on glory, and often a lie that is believed becomes the truth”;

“The more you have, the more greedily you strive for what you do not have. War is born in you out of victories”;

“His intimates advised Alexander to fall upon the enemy by night. He answered: ‘I do not steal a victory’”;

“There cannot be two kings in Asia, just as there cannot be two suns in the sky”;

“If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes (the philosopher)”;

“Darius III (king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire) offered Alexander very favourable terms of peace. Parmenion, a general who had also served Philip, Alexander’s father, said: ‘If I were Alexander, I would accept these terms.’ To which Alexander replied: ‘I would do the same if I were Parmenion’”;

“I see that there will be a great contest over my grave.”

(Alexander the Great — king of Macedon from 336 BC, of the Argead dynasty, one of the greatest commanders in history and the creator of a vast power that fell apart after his death. In Muslim tradition he may be identified with the legendary king Dhul-Qarnayn.

Ascending the throne at the age of 20 after the death of his father, King Philip II of Macedon, Alexander secured Macedonia’s northern borders and again subdued Greece by crushing the rebellious city of Thebes. In the spring of 334 BC he set out on his legendary campaign to the East and within seven years fully conquered the Persian Achaemenid Empire, including Central Asia.

He then began the conquest of India, but withdrew at the insistence of his soldiers, worn out by the long campaign. The cities Alexander founded, still among the largest in several countries today, and the Greek colonisation of new territories in Asia helped spread Greek culture eastwards and laid the foundation of Hellenism. Just short of his 33rd year, Alexander died at Babylon of a serious illness. His empire was at once divided among his generals, and for several decades a succession of wars between them — the Diadochi — followed.)