Political leaders, lacking documents that could be kept secret (apart from the occasional exception), lacking media they could control, were of necessity brought into a direct and immediate relationship with their constituents, and therefore under more and direct and immediate control.

Ideal goals are a menace in themselves, as much in more modern philosophers as in Plato.

It is a mark of civilised man that he seeks to understand his traditions, and to criticise them, not to swallow them whole.

In the western world today everyone is a democrat.

Perhaps the best known, and certainly the most vaunted, "discovery" of modern public opinion research is the indifference and ignorance of a majority of the electorate in western democracies.

If I had to choose one which best characterized the condition of being a political leader in Athens, the word would be "tension".

Faction is the greatest evil and the most common danger. "Faction" is the conventional English translation of the Greek stasis, one of the most remarkable words to be found in any language.