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Moses I. Finley Quotes

Sir Moses Isaac Finley, FBA was an American-born British academic and classical scholar. His prosecution by the McCarran Security Committee led to his move to England, where he became an English classical scholar and eventually master of Darwin College, Cambridge. His most notable work is The Ancient Economy , where he argued that status and civic ideology governed the economy in antiquity rather than rational economic motivations. Wikipedia  

✵ 20. May 1912 – 23. June 1986
Moses I. Finley: 17 quotes0 likes

Famous Moses I. Finley Quotes

“We must consider not only why the classical theory of democracy appears to be in contradiction with the observed practice, but also why the many different responses to this observation, though mutually incompatible, all share the belief that democracy is the best form of political organization.”

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 1, Leaders and Followers, p. 10-11

“The Athenians made mistakes. Which governmental system has not? The familiar game of condemning Athens for not having lived to some ideal of perfection is a stultifying approach.”

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 1, Leaders and Followers, p. 33

“Historical explanation is not identical with moral judgment.”

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 3, Democracy, Consensus and National Interest, p. 96

“From Aristophanes to Aristotle, the attack on the demagogues always falls back on the one central question: in whose interest does the the leader lead?”

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 2, Athenian Demagogues, p. 43

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

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 2, Athenian Demagogues, p. 60

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

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 4, Socrates and After, p. 140

Moses I. Finley Quotes

“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.”

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 3, Democracy, Consensus and National Interest, p. 87

“What is good for a country? What is the national interest?”

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 3, Democracy, Consensus and National Interest, p. 76

“for it is conflict combined with consent, not consent alone, which preserves democracy from eroding into oligarchy.”

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 2, Athenian Demagogues, p. 73

“In the western world today everyone is a democrat.”

Moses I. Finley

Preface, p. ix
Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985)

“In Rome much pamphleteering took the form of verses and songs, circulated orally, or of libelli, defamatory placards or broadsheets”

Moses I. Finley

whence our word "libel"
Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 5, Censorship in Classical Antiquity, p. 150

“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.”

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 1, Leaders and Followers, p. 18

“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.”

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 3, Democracy, Consensus and National Interest, p. 90

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

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 1, Leaders and Followers, p. 6

“And nothing inhibited fourth-century orators in the assembly and the law-courts from indulging in savage slander, without a touch of humour in it.”

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 5, Censorship in Classical Antiquity, p. 171-172

“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.”

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 2, Athenian Demagogues, p. 44

“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.”

Moses I. Finley

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 1, Leaders and Followers, p. 3

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