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

Moses I. Finley Economics See all quotes by Moses I. Finley →

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

“for it is conflict combined with consent, not consent alone, which preserves democracy from eroding into oligarchy.”

“In the western world today everyone is a democrat.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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