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

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

What I am arguing, in effect, is that the full democratic system of the second half of the fifth century B.C. would not have been introduced had there been no Athenian empire.

In the western world today everyone is a democrat.

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.

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