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“The Andrians were the first of the islanders to refuse Themistocles' demand for money. He had put it to them that they would be unable to avoid paying, because the Athenians had the support of two powerful deities, one called Persuasion and the other Compulsion.

The Andrians had replied that Athens was lucky to have two such useful gods, who were obviously responsible for her wealth and greatness; unfortunately, they themselves, in their small & inadequate land, had two utterly useless deities, who refused to leave the island and insisted on staying; and their names were Poverty and Inability.”
― Herodotus, The Histories

“It was about that time [415 BCE] that the poet Diagoras of Melos was proscribed for atheism, he having declared that the non-punishment of a certain act of iniquity proved that there were no gods. It has been surmised, with some reason, that the iniquity in question was the slaughter of the Melians by the Athenians in 416 BCE, and the Athenian resentment in that case was personal and political rather than religious. For some time after 415 the Athenian courts made strenuous efforts to punish every discoverable case of impiety; and parodies of the Eleusinian mysteries were alleged against Alcibiades and others. Diagoras, who was further charged with divulging the Eleusinian and other mysteries, and with making firewood of an image of Herakles, telling the god thus to perform his thirteenth labour by cooking turnips, became thenceforth one of the proverbial atheists of the ancient world, and a reward of a silver talent was offered for killing him, and of two talents for his capture alive; despite which he seems to have escaped.”
― J. M. Robertson, A Short History Of Freethought: Ancient And Modern

“Athènes devint à partir de 450 avant Jésus-Christ la capitale culturelle du monde grec. La philosophie aussi prit un nouveau tournant.
Les philosophes de la nature étaient avant tout des hommes de science qui s'intéressaient à l'analyse physique du monde et, à ce titre, ils tiennent une place importante dans l'histoire de la science. Mais, à Athènes, l'étude de la nature fut supplantée par celle de l'homme et sa place dans la société.
Petit à petit, une démocratie avec des assemblées du peuple et des juges populaires vit le jour. Une condition sine qua non pour l'établissement de la démocratie était que le peuple fût assez éclairé pour pouvoir participer au processus démocratique. Qu'une jeune démocratie exige une certaine éducation du peuple, nous l'avons bien vu de nos jours.”
― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World

“Per tutti, Ateniesi e non, simpatizzanti e nemici, Atene è la città dei processi, o meglio, come nelle Vespe di Aristofane, una città malata di processi, in cui tutto passa per i tribunali, in modo fin troppo disinvolto: nei processi, scriveva il sofista e retore Antifonte, che di queste cose se ne intendeva, conta la capacità di persuadere e non l’accertamento della verità.”
― Mauro Bonazzi, Processo a Socrate