People From Athens

"The referendum of 5th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage..."

"Politics, I now understand, is at its best when it enlightens us via an opponent's insight."

"I mean, the enclosures in Britain would never have happened without the king's army and without state brutality for pushing peasants off their ancestors' land and creating the commodification of labor, the commodification of land which then gave rise to capitalism."

"The world we live in is ruled by insiders... one of the first things said to me by a very high ranking American official.. when I was minister... you have a choice. You can be an insider or an outsider. If you are an outsider you'll retain your right to say anything you want, whatever you believe in but know that you're going to be persecuted, you're going to be villified and you'll be jettisoned. … On the other hand, you can chose to be an insider, to play the game... if you chose to be an insider you'll be given information that outsiders don't have, you'll be given... an opportunity... to make some... small tiny changes within the inside, but the one rule that you must respect, is that insiders do not tell outsiders the truth, and they do not turn against other insiders ... Julian [Assange]... created the technology that allowed the outsiders to get a glimpse within...and this is why he's being persecuted this way and one of the worst aspects of this persecution from a feminist perspective is that he's been accused of a crime for which he's never been charged, that turns progressives against feminists and feminists against progressives. This attempt by the establishment to turn progressives against themselves in order to prosecute someone who has... revealed their crimes is a heinous crime in itself...""

"I’d say DiEM25’s program is the only one worth fighting for. In the European elections we didn’t do well — we got just over 1 percent of the vote. But I should add, our total budget was just €85,000, a pitiful sum for a European election. People running to be the mayor of even a small town would spend many times that. Running on a principled position meant we didn’t have the infrastructure or spending power to do better. ... in the European elections our party, MeRA25, had to struggle against a systematic effort to silence us. We received absolutely no media exposure until the moment where media were forced by law to mention us and give us a little airtime. This was not true of Popular Unity or other smaller parties advocating Lexit [a left-wing exit from the EU]. …These are deeply conservative forces... There is nothing liberal about them: they are traditional, austerian class warriors against the working class... The regime did not feel threatened by parties advocating exit from the euro and EU."

"I don't have a name - my family doesn't have a name. The law that Mr. Papandreou passed basically says that he considers that I am not Greek and that my family was Greek only so long as we were exercising the responsibilities of sovereign, and I had to go out and acquire a name. The problem is that my family originates from Denmark, and the Danish royal family haven't got a surname."

"I've always been a republican, naturally, and I certainly can't say I sympathise with Constantine... I'm not interested in stating whether or not I like him. What interests me is whether or not he's useful in the fight against the junta."

"If the Greek people decide that they want a republic, they are entitled to have that and should be left in peace to enjoy it."

"Sadly, he's mean as well as stupid, and takes advantage of our generosity."

"I consider myself King of the Hellenes and sole expression of legality in my country until the Greek people freely decide otherwise. I fully expected that the [military] regime would depose me eventually. They are frightened of the Crown because it is a unifying force among the people."

"A match as a pen Blood on the floor as ink The forgotten gauze cover as paper But what should I write? I might just manage my address. This ink is strange; it clots. I write you from a prison in Greece."

"The teardrops which you will see flowing from our eyes you should never believe signs of despair. They are only promise promise for Fight."

"I gave life to the walls a voice I gave them more friendly so that would become my company and the guards asked to know where they could find the paint.The walls of the cell kept the secret and the mercenaries searched everywhere but paint they could not find.Because they did not think for one moment that they should search into my veins."

"I don't want to delve into the past for archeological pleasure - though it could have been that - but because the past has a reality which conditions us deep down. Then if you bring it slowly to the surface, it's full of possibilities."

"I don't know if I'm making myself clear, but if I were to accept this business of conceptual art I would have no reason to exist."

"To study the art of living is to engage in one of its forms."

"All we are now concerned with is the search for “new and improved” version of whatever means are already available for attaining goals such means make possible. The value of the goals themselves is irrelevant … What counts is doing things better than before. Whether such things are worth doing in the first place is no longer a question."

"Both dogmatism and metaphysics … are attempts to project one’s own views on the world, and they are just as much attempts to hide precisely this projection from themselves as well as from their audience."

"According to Heidegger, the blind desire for manipulation [of nature] came about because modernity turned reason—which was, for the ancients, and even for the medievals, a source of valuable goals—into a purely instrumental faculty."

"Irony, which in Socrates’ case consists of saying “too little,” functions for him just as hyperbole, which is saying “too much,” functions for Nietzsche."

"For Socrates, virtue was nothing but its own pursuit. And only the promise of happiness is happiness itself."

"The one reaction Nietzsche cannot tolerate is indifference, and this is what his use of hyperbole is designed to eliminate."

"He who controls the sea controls everything."

"I choose the likely man in preference to the rich man; I want a man without money rather than money without a man."

"Themistocles was a man who exhibited the most indubitable signs of genius; indeed, in this particular he has a claim on our admiration quite extraordinary and unparalleled. By his own native capacity, alike unformed and unsupplemented by study, he was at once the best judge in those sudden crises which admit of little or of no deliberation, and the best prophet of the future, even to its most distant possibilities. An able theoretical expositor of all that came within the sphere of his practice, he was not without the power of passing an adequate judgment in matters in which he had no experience. He could also excellently divine the good and evil which lay hid in the unseen future. In fine, whether we consider the extent of his natural powers, or the slightness of his application, this extraordinary man must be allowed to have surpassed all others in the faculty of intuitively meeting an emergency."

"Strike, if you will, but hear."

"To all my friends without distinction I am ready to display my opulence: come one, come all; and whosoever likes to take a share is welcome to the wealth that lies within my soul."

"It was not long before [Diogenes] despised [all the philosophers at Athens] save Antisthenes, whom he cultivated, not so much from approval of the man himself as of the words he spoke, which he felt to be alone true and best adapted to help mankind. For when he contrasted the man Antisthenes with his words, he sometimes made this criticism, that the man himself was much weaker; and so in reproach he would call him a trumpet because he could not hear his own self, no matter how much noise he made. Antisthenes tolerated this banter of his since he greatly admired the man’s character; and so, in requital for being called a trumpet, he used to say that Diogenes was like the wasps, the buzz of whose wings is slight but the sting very sharp."

"For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians; your mother commands me, and you command your mother."

"Wealth and poverty do not lie in a person's estate, but in their souls."

"ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικὸς ἡ αὐτὴ ἀρετή."

"προσέχειν τοῖς ἐχθροῖς· πρῶτοι γὰρ τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων αἰσθάνονται."

"τὰ πονηρὰ νόμιζε πάντα ξενικά."

"I have enough to eat till my hunger is stayed, to drink till my thirst is sated; to clothe myself withal; and out of doors not Callias there, with all his riches, is more safe than I from shivering; and when I find myself indoors, what warmer shirting do I need than my bare walls? what ampler greatcoat than the tiles above my head?"

"ἐρωτηθεὶς τί τῶν μαθημάτων ἀναγκαιότατον, “τὸ περιαιρεῖν,” ἔφη, “τὸ ἀπομανθάνειν.”"

"Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes."

"There is no work so mean, but it would amply serve me to furnish me with sustenance."

"κρεῖττόν ἐστι μετ᾿ ὀλίγων ἀγαθῶν πρὸς ἅπαντας τοὺς κακοὺς ἢ μετὰ πολλῶν κακῶν πρὸς ὀλίγους ἀγαθοὺς μάχεσθαι."

"I never learned how to tune a harp, or play upon a lute; but I know how to raise a small and inconsiderable city to glory and greatness."

"May I never sit on a tribunal where my friends shall not find more favor from me than strangers."

"States are doomed when they are unable to distinguish good men from bad."

"I have with me two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion."

"ἐρωτηθεὶς τί αὐτῷ περιγέγονεν ἐκ φιλοσοφίας, ἔφη, “τὸ δύνασθαι ἑαυτῷ ὁμιλεῖν.”"

"As iron is eaten away by rust, so the envious are consumed by their own passion."

"It is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive."

"πρός τε τὸ Ποντικὸν μειράκιον μέλλον φοιτᾶν αὐτῷ καὶ πυθόμενον τίνων αὐτῷ δεῖ, φησί, “βιβλιαρίου καινοῦ καὶ γραφείου καινοῦ καὶ πινακιδίου καινοῦ,” τὸν νοῦν παρεμφαίνων."

"Antisthenes ... was asked on one occasion what learning was the most necessary, and he replied, "To unlearn one's bad habits.""

"Once, when he was applauded by rascals, he remarked, "I am horribly afraid I have done something wrong.""

"ἀρχὴ παιδεύσεως ἡ τῶν ὀνομάτων ἐπίσκεψις"

"ἔλεγέ τε συνεχές, “μανείην μᾶλλον ἢ ἡσθείην.”"