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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Historical explanation is not identical with moral judgment.

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.

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

In the western world today everyone is a democrat.

Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.

Where would I be (and what would happen to me), if I could see all round me and above and below at once ?

Playing scales is like a boxer skipping rope or punching a bag. It's not the thing in itself; it's preparatory to the activity

I do have a Bentley. I do go out.

For me the best kind of film music is liturgical music. Liturgical music is essentially a million scores for the same film.

I ain't no movie star, man. I'm a booty star.

It's a cyclical thing. When they make one, everyone loves them. Different genres come around in succession. People always welcome the western. It's America's genre.

Private property is one of the best institutions which has ever evolved, to protect us from the bullying of others.

I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms.