Sublime

Car je refusais, ici comme partout, de m'assujettir à un système. J'acceptais la guerre comme un moyen vers la paix si les négociations n'y pouvaient suffire, à la façon du médecin se décidant pour le cautère après avoir essayé des simples. Tout est si compliqué dans les affaires humaines que mon règne pacifique aurait, lui aussi, ses périodes de g

The Truman Doctrine articulated a willingness to provide economic and military aid to Western European countries under pressure; Greece and Turkey were early recipients. The Marshall Plan, named for President Truman’s secretary of state George Marshall and announced at Harvard in June 1947, in what is arguably the most significant commencement spee

At Tarentum, for example, the higher class having lost the greater part of its members in a war against the Iapygians, a democratic government was at once established in the city. The course of events was the same at Argos, some thirty years before; at the close of an unsuccessful war against the Spartans, the number of real citizens had become so

Socrates lived a remarkable life. He also died a remarkable death: He had been tried for corrupting the youth of Athens and other alleged misdeeds, found guilty by his fellow citizens, and sentenced to die by drinking poison hemlock. He could have avoided this punishment by throwing himself on the mercy of the court or by running away after the sen

Fox Conner also viewed Woodrow Wilson’s concept that the nation had actually fought a “war to end all wars” as a “mere slogan of propaganda.” In contrast to the isolationist sentiment then prevalent in the United States, Conner repeatedly told Eisenhower that American participation in another large-scale European war was “almost a certainty.” Again

Massive enterprises must have major incentives. Somebody has to show everybody—or almost everybody—that sacrifices made now will bear fruit later. And the ones Pericles had in mind were not to the gods, as in earlier times,17 but for a city that had become a state that was becoming an empire. Which had to remain, nonetheless, a community. If Athens

And here, O men of Athens, I must beg you not to interrupt me, even if I seem to say something extravagant. For the word which I will speak is not mine. I will refer you to a witness who is worthy of credit; that witness shall be the God of Delphi—he

Some one will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell you that to do as you say would be a disobedience to the God, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not b

Thrasymachus, who has been listening with growing impatience, breaks in with a vehement protest against such childish nonsense. He proclaims emphatically that “justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.” This point of view is refuted by Socrates with quibbles; it is never fairly faced. It raises the fundamental question in ethics an