“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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "for it is conflict combined with consent, not consent alone, which preserves democracy from eroding into oligarchy." by Moses I. Finley?

Moses I. Finley 17

American historian 1912–1986

Related quotes

“These oligarchies alone manage the political systems inherited from bourgeois electoral and representative democracy, having succeeded in domesticating the right and left electoral political parties, at the price of eroding the legitimacy of the democratic practice concerned. These oligarchies alone control the propaganda apparatuses, having succeeded in reducing the directors of news organizations including public broadcasters to the status of media clergy in their exclusive service. None of these aspects of the dictatorship of the oligarchy is challenged by the social and political movements at work in the triad, especially not in the United States.”

Samir Amin (1931–2018) Egyptian economist

The Election of Donald Trump https://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2016/amin301116.html (30 November 2016), Monthly Review Magazine (MRzine)

“Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper - the Director of National Intelligence - baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.”

Edward Snowden (1983) American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor

Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 1

“Everything has been globalised, except our consent. Democracy alone has been confined to the nation state. It stands at the border, suitcase in hand, without a passport.”

George Monbiot (1963) English writer and political activist

The Age of Consent (2003)

“True consent is free consent, and full freedom of consent implies equality on the part of both parties to bargain.”

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929) British sociologist

Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter IV, "Laissez - Faire", p. 50.

“He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

“This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Ethics of Ambiguity

Conclusion
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Context: A conquest of this kind is never finished; the contingency remains, and, so that he may assert his will, man is even obliged to stir up in the world the outrage he does not want. But this element of failure is a very condition of his life; one can never dream of eliminating it without immediately dreaming of death. This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite.