"What is good for a country? What is the national interest?"

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

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More by Moses I. Finley

“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.”

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

“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.”

Resonant Thoughts

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"Athenian democracy was different from the much later American form, not only because it was the expression of a single city-state but because it was a direct , rather than a representative democracy. …"

— Thomas Cahill

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"When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not…"

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