The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Volume 1 Quotes

“Political life sets the main problems for the political theorist, causing a certain range of issues to appear problematic, and a corresponding range of questions to become the leading subjects of debate. This view does not entails that theoretical ideas are to be treated as a straightforward outcome of their social base, but are certainly to be read in terms of their wider intellectual context”
― Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Volume 1: The Renaissance

“the concepts of libertas and libertà came to be employed ‘almost as technical terms of Florentine politics and diplomacy’ in the course of the fourteenth century, and that they were almost invariably used in order to express the same ideas of independence and self-government”
― Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume 1, The Renaissance