Our love of beauty does not lead to extravagance: our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft. We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it. Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but in the affairs of state as well . . . we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say he has no business here at all.
Thucydides, Pericles’ Funeral Speech,
The History of Peloponnesian War