“Only rarely did they advocate specific policies.”

This may well have made it more rather than less democratic than many countries today .

Thus the Western Empire died.

The story of the fifth century was one of the exploitation of imperial weakness.

Although commenting on issues of current importance was more common.

By pagans the Jews (and later Christians) were seen as perverse.

Almost indeed as atheists, for they denied the very existence of other gods.

In the main voters looked more for a capable individual who once elected could do whatever the State required.

At Rome there were nothing even vaguely resembling modern political parties although given the stifling impact of these.

And each candidate for office competed as an individual.

What the advocates of these tax rates fail to realize is that the greater part of the incomes taxed away would not have been consumed but saved and invested.

The advocates of public control cannot do without inflation. They need it in order to finance their policy of reckless spending and of lavishly subsidizing and bribing the voters.

The first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism.

The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathies with their just feelings.

If I advocate cautious optimism it is not because I do not have faith in the future but because I do not want to encourage blind faith.

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies.

I’ve advocated a proportional tax system. You make $10 billion, you pay a billion. You make $10, you pay one. And everybody gets treated the same way.

Why is it that scuba divers and surfers are some of the strongest advocates of ocean conservation? Because they’ve spent time in and around the ocean, and they’ve personally seen the beauty.