A Quote by Thucydides on achievement, authority, constitution, control, democracy, excellence, funerals, justice, laws, life, obedience, oppression, play, privacy, reason, security, shame, spirit, and talent

Our constitution is named a democracy, because it is in the hands not of the few but of the many. But our laws secure equal justice for all in their private disputes, and our public opinion welcomes and honors talent in every branch of achievement, not for any sectional reason but on grounds of excellence alone. And as we give free play to all in our public life, so we carry the same spirit into our daily relations with one another. . . . Open and friendly in our private intercourse, in our public acts we keep strictly within the control of law. We acknowledge the restraint of reverence; we are obedient to whomsoever is set in authority, and to the laws, more sepecially to those which offer protection to the oppressed and those unwritten ordinances whose transgression brings admitted shame. lb. II, Funeral Oration of Pericles, 37