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Greeks have always been very confident, very strong people. That is - that is our real, I guess, benefit, is that we are independent thinkers. We will always get up on our feet. We - we sometimes act the best when we are downtrodden.

The adoration of human nature by the Greeks appeared in Greek plastic art and was the cause of its excellence.

We Greeks are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.

Mankind are apt to be strongly prejudiced in favor of whatever is countenanced by antiquity, enforced by authority, and recommended by custom.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.

We were discussing civilization and the fact that young men among the Greeks at that time were idiots and uneducated, so the men had emotional and friendly relationships with members of their own sex.

Mencius said that human nature is good. I disagree with that.

Humanity could only have survived and flourished if it held social and personal values that transcended the urges of the individual, embodying selfish desires - and these stem from the sense of a transcendent good.

The traditional Christian attitude toward human personality was that human nature was essentially good and that it was formed and modified by social pressures and training.