Only after long intervals do they meet together at all, and then they devote only a fraction of their time to their general interests, spending most of it arranging their own separate affairs. It never occurs to any of them that the apathy of one will damage the interests of all. Instead, each thinks that the responsibility for its future belongs to someone else, and so, while everyone has the same idea privately, no one notices that from a general point of view things are going downhill.
-Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Sec. 141
-Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Sec. 141