Athenian Democracy Quotes

“What happened to Athenian democracy? The conservative way was overthrown by rampant innovation. Old structures were replaced with fluid, mobile opinions (i.e., democracy). Aristocratic leaders were replaced by demagogues. A similar transformation has occurred in American life, only on a more massive scale, with innovation threatening the most basic social structures. Everything has been transformed today, and nothing is what it once was. If we have conservatives in today’s society, they have almost nothing left to conserve. The licentiousness of the multitude is the supreme law, so that freedom no longer means freedom from an oppressive government. Rather, it is the freedom to behave in a manner that requires greater and greater government involvement; more and more government intervention – from family courts to health care.”
― J.R.Nyquist

“It will for ever remain one of the greatest triumphs of Athenian democracy that it treated slaves humanely, and that in spite of the inhuman propaganda of philosophers like Plato himself and Aristotle it came, as he witnesses, very close to abolishing slavery.”
― Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato

“Both [Aristotle] and Plato denied the greatness of Periclean Athens and rejected its fundamental assumption, that its citizens could be trusted to take even the most important decisions because they were free and responsible men.”
― Cecil Maurice Bowra, The Greek Experience