The more I have studied American history and the more clearly I have seen what the problems are. I do believe that the common deno...minator of our great men in public life has not been mere allegiance to one political party but the disinterested devotion with which they have strived to serve the whole country. And the relative unimportance that they have ascribed to politics compared with the paramount importance of Government.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, th...ey do not cheat, they do not try to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice nor to authority, they are often frank about their ignorance, their disputes are fairly decorous, they do not confuse what is being argued with race, politics, sex or age, they listen patiently to the young and to the old who both know everything. These are the general virtues of scholarship, and they are peculiarly the virtues of science.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We should not leave Shopping World without questioning our initial assumption, that here we are in the modern agora. The agora of ...the classical Greek city was similar, in being the market-place and yet serving as much more, indeed as the most important public space. When a citizen left the privacy of his home, wishing to engage in public life, most likely he went to the agora. Shopping World at its most general is a public space. It answers to one of the most basic of human needs, that for society in the sense of a defined space among people in which to see and be seen, in which to move and to meet, to linger and to evade, a space at the same time in which to conduct some of life's important business--in this case shopping. The Greek agora, however, was different in one crucial respect, a difference that highlights a momentous development in modern life. It was surrounded by civic buildings and temples; it served as the daily centre not only of commerce, but also of religious, political, judicial, and indeed general social life. To be in public in ancient Athens meant to be a citizen, and likely enough to be engaged in civic duties. In modern life, by contrast, the areas of political action have become so remote that to be in public for a person has lost all connotation of being a responsible citizen with duties to his community.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He who doesn't know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master; the interests of public life are alien to anyone w...ho is unable to enjoy others' successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices that... may accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
These studies which stimulate the young, divert the old, are an ornament in prosperity and a refuge and comfort in adversity; they... delight us at home, are no impediment in public life, keep us company at night, in our travels, and whenever we retire to the country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[The political mind] is a strange mixture of vanity and timidity, of an obsequious attitude at one time and a delusion of grandeur... at another time. The political mind is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »