Historical explanation is not identical with moral judgment.

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.

man is by nature designed to live in the polis, the highest form of koinonia, community; that is man's end or goal if he achieves the full potentiality of his nature.

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

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

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.