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The Athenians had an oath for someone who was about to become a citizen. They had to swear that 'I shall leave the city not less but more beautiful than I found it.'

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

As in Athens, the right to participate was restricted to men, just as it was also in all later democracies and republics until the twentieth century.

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

Wherever magistrates were appointed from among those who complied with the injunctions of the laws, Socrates considered the government to be an aristocracy.

The Athenians are right to accept advice from anyone, since it is incumbent on everyone to share in that sort of excellence, or else there can be no city at all.

When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

The Greek city-states politicised citizen and subject, creating institutions that were way ahead of anything in China or India. The politicians of antiquity exercised a political and military, if not economic, hegemony on the culture as a whole. The idea of democracy was first born and practised here.

Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made.