Athenian Democracy Quotes

The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.

Many of our ideas of democracy, so much of our literature and philosophy and science can be traced back to roots right here in Athens.

In the world over, the very name of our country is immediately associated with the Parthenon.

The elections to the various offices Solon enacted should be by lot, out of candidates selected by each of the tribes. Each tribe selected ten candidates for the nine archonships, and among these the lot was cast

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.

[Regarding legislative assemblies,] the number ought at most to be kept within a certain limit, in order to avoid the confusion and intemperance of a multitude. In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.

Go back to classical times, say classical Greece. Who drank the hemlock? Was it someone who was conforming, obeying the gods? Or was it someone who was disrupting the youth and questioning the faith and belief? Socrates, in other words. It was Socrates.

Greece – the mother of all democracies

Athenian men, I respect and love you, but I shall obey the god rather than you.

The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations.

Greece gave democracy to the rest of the world.

A Locrian, who proposed any new law, stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.

The spirit of Greece, passing through and ascending above the world, hath so animated universal nature, that the very rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilds burst forth with it.