Quotes from Steven B. Smith

To tolerate Socrates would be to say to him that we care so little for our way of life that we are willing to let you challenge and impugn it every day.

Political philosophy is the study of the deepest, most intractable, and most enduring problems of political life.

The problems we confront today, to the extent that they remain political problems, are precisely the same as those confronted in fifth-century Athens, fifteenth-century Florence, or seventeenth-century England.

The study of political philosophy has always revolved around such questions as "Why should I obey the law?" "What is a citizen and how should he or she be educated?" "Who is a lawgiver?" "What is the relation between freedom and authority?" "How should politics and theology be related?" and perhaps a few of others.

One thing you will quickly discover is that there are no permanent answers in the study of political philosophy, only permanent questions.

Today it is the hope of many both here and abroad that we might some day overcome the basic structure of regime politics and organize our world around global norms of justice and international law. Is such a hope possible? It cannot be entirely ruled out, but such a world—a world administered by international courts of law, by judges and judicial tribunals—would no longer be a political world. Politics is only possible within the structure of the regime.

which approach is more scientific: Aristotle's, which is explicitly and necessarily evaluative, which offers advice and exhortation about how to care for the political order, or contemporary political science, which claims to be neutral and nonpartisan, but which smuggles its values and preferences in through the back door.

There may be strength in numbers, but not necessarily truth.

If all ideas are limited to their own time and place, then this must also be true for the idea that all ideas are limited to their own time and place.

I awaken and persuade and reproach each one of you, and I do not stop settling down everywhere upon you the whole day. (30d–e)

the ills of the human race would never end until either those who are sincerely and truly lovers of wisdom come into political power, or the rulers of our cities, by the grace of God, learn true philosophy.3