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

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.

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

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.

You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.

[W]e will do what we like with the bourgeoisie. ... We give the orders; they do what they are told. Any resistance will be broken ruthlessly.

There was, I think, never any reason to believe in any innate superiority of the male, except his superior muscle.

The girl's lover was gone, but his shadow was still there.

It's very slow for me to create humor. It takes me a long time to write a humor piece. It takes days.

The public library is the most dangerous place in town

It's not like there's a law against flying." "Yes there is. The law of gravity.

People think it’s easy to be cynical and pessimistic, but it’s incredibly hard work. It’s much easier to be hopeful.

All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things.

Chiropractic gives me the flexibility I need to keep in the game.