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

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

Historical explanation is not identical with moral judgment.

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.

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.

Political leaders, lacking documents that could be kept secret (apart from the occasional exception), lacking media they could control, were of necessity brought into a direct and immediate relationship with their constituents, and therefore under more and direct and immediate control.

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.

In the western world today everyone is a democrat.

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