Quotes from Moses Finley

It is a mark of civilised man that he seeks to understand his traditions, and to criticise them, not to swallow them whole.

man is by nature designed to live in the polis, the highest form of koinonia, community; that is man's end or goal if he achieves the full potentiality of his nature.

A genuinely political society, in which discussion and debate are an essential technique, is a society full of risks.

Knowledge for its own sake was meaningless, its mere accumulation a waste of time. Knowledge must lead to understanding.

Ideal goals are a menace in themselves, as much in more modern philosophers as in Plato.