““There Pericles says that the essence of the Athenian democracy is that any citizen, regardless of class or profession, should be able to take over any governmental office and execute it properly and wisely with the good of his fellow citizens in mind. The reason any citizen would have the necessary ability had nothing to do with family lineage; it was simply the universal dispensation to citizens, in childhood, of paideia, the Hellenic education. Paideia was an ideology based on democracy, an attitude that was recovered and reconstructed in Europe from the Renaissance to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Education was supposed to transform one from a child unthinkingly submissive to autocracy into an adult capable of guiding one’s own destiny and that of one’s fellows.””
![“I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world." [As quoted in Plutarch's Of Banishment ]” quote by Socrates](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/6dc/socrates-405_cosmopolitan_i-am-not-an-athenian-or-a-greek-but-a-ci_2951058.jpg)
![“[M]ore than they wanted freedom, the Athenians wanted security. Yet they lost everything-security, comfort, and freedom. This was because they wanted not to give to society, but for society to give to them. The freedom they were seeking was freedom from responsibility. It is no wonder, then, that…” quote by Margaret Thatcher](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/12b/margaret-thatcher-463_athenians_m-ore-than-they-wanted-freedom-the-athen_3205501.jpg)
