Love of country is what I do not feel when I am wronged, but what I felt when secure in my rights as a citizen.... the true lover of his country is not he who consents to lose it unjustly rather than attack it, but he who longs for it so much that he will go all lengths to recover it.

Alcibiades, as quoted by Thucydides, (The History of the Peloponnesian War)

It will be said, perhaps, that democracy is neither wise nor equitable, but that the holders of property are also the best fitted to rule.  I say, on the contrary, first, that the word demos, or people, includes the whole state, oligarchy only a part; next, that if the best guardians of property are the rich, and the best counselors the wise, none can hear and decide so well as the many; and that all these talents, severally and collectively, have their just place in a democracy. But an oligarchy gives the many their share of the danger, and not content with the largest part takes and keeps the whole of the profit.

 Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War

How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?

Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

Try to do what you do without mockery of our heartbroken little era. To mock is easy.

Anne Carson, 1=1, New Yorker of January 11, 2016

Athenians: Aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must....

Melians: As we think, at any rate, it is expedient —we speak as we are obliged, since you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest— that you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid if they can be got to pass current....

Athenians:  Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can.....  It is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best.

  Thucydides (Book Five), The History of the Peloponnesian War

It is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy.

 Thucydides (Book Four), The History of the Peloponnesian War

Ordinary men usually manage public affairs better than their more gifted fellows. The latter are always wanting to appear wiser than the laws, and to overrule every proposition brought forward, thinking that they cannot show their wit in more important matters.

 Thucydides (Book Three), The History of the Peloponnesian War

There can never be any solid friendship between individuals, or union between communities that is worth the name , unless the parties be persuaded of each other's honesty, and be generally congenial the one to the other; since from difference in feeling springs also difference in conduct.

 Thucydides (Chapter IV), The History of the Peloponnesian War

[Pericles] told them to wait quietly, to pay attention to their marine, to attempt no new conquests, and to expose the city to no hazards during the war, and doing this, promised them a favourable result. What they did was the very contrary, allowing private ambitions and private interests, in matters apparently quite foreign to the war, to lead them into projects unjust both to themselves and to their allies— projects whose success would only conduce to the honour and advantage of private persons, and whose failure entailed certain disaster on the country in the war.... each grasping at supremacy, they ended by committing even the conduct of state affairs to the whims of the multitude.

Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War

"Or as [John Gray] put it in Straw Dogs:  The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industralisation, 'Western civilization' or any flaw in human institutions.  It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate."


David Bromwich, "Are We ‘Exceptionally Rapacious Primates’?", The New York Review of Books (November 5, 2015)

Human beings ... may be divided simply into those who know they are acting and those who do not. True philosophers belong to the first group. The second encompasses, among others, utopian capitalists and Communists, the fanatics of the religious wars of the seventeenth century and the jihadists of the twenty-first.

David Bromwich, "Are We ‘Exceptionally Rapacious Primates’?", The New York Review of Books (November 5, 2015)

Why are we so often awake? What is the purpose of being awake? I mean, besides for ten minutes of eating, a little bit of romance. Once that’s over, why are we not immediately again asleep?”

Rivka Galchen, Usl at the Stadium (The New Yorker, October 12, 2015)

Your country has a right to your services in sustaining the glories of her position. These are a common source of pride to you all, and you cannot decline the burdens of empire and still expect to share its honors. You should remember also that what you are fighting against is not merely slavery as an exchange for independence, but also loss of empire and danger from the animosities incurred in its exercise. Besides, to recede is no longer possible.... For what you hold is, to speak somewhat plainly, a tyranny; to take it perhaps was wrong, but to let it go is unsafe.

Pericles, as quoted by Thucydides in  The History of the Peloponnesian War

The Athenians are addicted to innovation, and their designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution.... they are adventurous beyond their power, and daring beyond their judgment, and in danger they are sanguine.... they are never at home.... they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to give none to others.

Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War  (Translated by Richard Crawley; Book 1, Chapter 3)

[The Greeks] never pretended that their gods were always benevolent or omnipotent in human affairs... What was important was the maintenance of dignity and self-respect in the face of what the gods or fate decreed.


Charles Freeman, Egypt, Greece and Rome.

The early [Greek] philosophers were concerned with understanding the nature of the cosmos.... They appear to have shared a belief that the world system, the kosmos, was subject to a divine force which gave it an underlying and orderly background. Where they got this idea, which is a far cry from the Homeric world of gods, is unknown – possibly from eastern mythology. It proved fundamental to the speculations which followed.

Charles Freeman, Egypt, Greece and Rome.

Do not bring down the men of the magistrates' court or incite the just men to rebel.  Do not pay too much attention to him clad in shining garments, and have regard for him who is shabbily dressed.  Do not accept the reward of the powerful man or persecute the weal for him.

Advice from fathers to sons in Middle Kingdom Egypt as quoted by Charles Freeman in Egypt, Greece and Rome. 

Everything likes to live where it will age the most slowly, and gravity pulls it there.  The greater the slowing of time, the stronger gravity's pull....  At the surface of a black hole, time is slowed to a halt.

Kip Thorne, The Science of Interstellar

If I calculate the average annual quota required to limit global warming to two degrees this century I find that simply maintaining a typical American single-family home exceeds it in two weeks. Absent any indication of direct harm, what makes intuitive moral sense is to live the life I was given, be a good citizen, be kind to the people near me, and conserve as well as I reasonably can.... [Climate change] deeply confuses the human brain, which evolved to focus on the present, not the far future, and on readily perceivable movements, not slow and probabilistic developments.

Jonathan Franzen, "Carbon Capture: Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?" in the New Yorker of April 6, 2015

Personal happiness is profoundly conditioned by the social and political surroundings.

Tim Parks, "Revolutionary Italy: The Masterwork," New York Review (April 2, 2015)