Polis Quotes

• The good polis is made by the good person, his moral character intact, and the good polis, in turn, helps turn out good persons, their moral character intact.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Character, Helping, Moral

  Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (2014). “Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away”, p.164, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• 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.

  Moses Finley

  Men, Goal, Community

  "Democracy Ancient And Modern". Book by Moses Finley (Second Edition). Chapter 3, Democracy, Consensus and National Interest, p. 90, 1985.

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• Participation in the collective life of the polis both restrains the extraordinary individual and enlarges the ordinary individual, allowing him to participate in the extraordinary. An individual can achieve participatory excellence via the accomplishments of the polis and need not always be caught up in the agnostic struggle to outdo his peers.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Struggle, Accomplishment, Excellence

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• Honesty is the best policy ; a policy is, after all, a strategy for living in the polis in the city.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Honesty, Cities, Strategy

  "The Mad Man". Book by Samuel R. Delany, 1994.

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• Paraphrasing Plato's Republic: "Only people who have allowed themselves to be reformed by reality have it in themselves to reform their polis for the better."

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Plato, Reality, People

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• If future society assumes the contours foretold by Marxism, if the jungle of our cities turns to the polis of man and the dreams of anger are made real, the representative art will be high comedy. Art will be the laughter of intelligence, as it is in Plato, in Mozart, in Stendhal.

  George Steiner

  Dream, Art, Laughter

  George Steiner (1998). “Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman”, p.392, Yale University Press

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• Toward the end of the Cold War, capitalism created a military horror: the neutron bomb, a weapon that destroys life while leaving buildings intact. During the Fourth World War, however, a new wonder has been discovered: the financial bomb. Unlike those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this new bomb not only destroys the polis (here, the nation), imposing death, terror, and misery on those who live there, but also transforms its target into just another piece in the puzzle of economic globalization.

  Subcomandante Marcos

  Military, War, Hiroshima And Nagasaki

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• The court is like a palace built of marble; I mean that it is made up of very hard but very polished people.
  [Fr., La cour est comme un edifice bati de marbre; je veux dire qu'elle est composee d'hommes fort durs mais fort polis.]

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Mean, People, Palaces

  "Characters", VIII, 1688.

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• If the spirit of their intercourse were still the same after their coming together as it had been when they were living apart,' Aristotle writes, their association can't really be considered a polis, or political community.
  'A polis is not an association for residence on a common site, or for the sake of preventing mutual injustice and easing exchange.' While these conditions are necessary to a polis, they are not sufficient. 'The end and purpose of a polis is the good life, and the institutions of social life are means to that end.

  Michael Sandel

  Good Life, Writing, Mean

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• I did sit down with Jared Polis (D-CO), and we had a good discussion about having the LGBT [Equality] Caucus pool some money and perhaps hire a staffer like some of the other caucuses do. That way we could hopefully be even more proactive on issues like ENDA, student non-discrimination and some of the other bills that are out thereit’s just a matter of now figuring out — having seven of us total — how can we best move those forward either through legislation and working with the president to issue orders.

  Mark Pocan

  Moving, Order, Issues

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• Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward.

  Finley Peter Dunne

  Running, Comfort, Doe

  "On Newspaper Publicity" (1902)

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