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

Knowledge for its own sake was meaningless, its mere accumulation a waste of time. Knowledge must lead to understanding.

In the western world today everyone is a democrat.

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.

A genuinely political society, in which discussion and debate are an essential technique, is a society full of risks.

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

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.