Demosthenes Quotes

It is the natural disposition of all men to listen with pleasure to abuse and slander of their neighbour, and to hear with impatience those who utter praises of themselves.

The fact speak for themselves.

You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man's actions are, such must be his spirit.

No man who is not willing to help himself has any right to apply to his friends, or to the gods.

Virtue begins with understanding and is fulfilled by courage.

For the Athenians of that day did not look for an orator or a general who would enable them to live in happy servitude; they cared not to live at all, unless they might live in freedom. For every one of them felt that he had come into being, not for his father and his mother alone, but also for his country. And wherein lies the difference? He who thinks he was born for his parents alone awaits the death which destiny assigns him in the course of nature: but he who thinks he was born for his country also will be willing to die, that he may not see her in bondage, and will look upon the outrages and the indignities that he must needs bear in a city that is in bondage as more to be dreaded than death.

The best protection for the people is not necessarily to believe everything people tell them.

Close alliances with despots are never safe for free states.

We need money, for sure, Athenians, and without money nothing can be done that ought to be done.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit.

By persistent labor man may attain to all excellence.

What we wish, that we readily believe.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit.
For what every man wishes,
that he also believes to be true.

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots - suspicion.

What we have in us of the image of God is the love of truth and justice.

I'll betide thee, say I, and may the Gods, or at least the Athenians, confound thee for a vile citizen and a vile third-rate actor! Read the evidence.

The more able a man is, if he make ill use of his abilities, the more dangerous will he be to the commonwealth.

Whatever shall be to the advantage of all, may that prevail!

What a man wishes, he will believe.

The most noble title any child can have is Third.

The man who has received a benefit ought always to remember it, but he who has granted it ought to forget the fact at once.

All speech is vain and empty unless it be accompanied by action.

Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who are from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts, but brothers, not rivals, but fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence ... The difference ... is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging.

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.

I think that one who has received a kindness ought to remember it all his life; but that the doer of the kindness should forget it once for all; if the former is to behave like a good man, the latter like one free from all meanness. To be always recalling and speaking of one's own benefactions is almost like upbraiding the recipients of them.

Every advantage in the past is judged in the light of the final issue.

It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery. These may, perhaps, succeed for once, and borrow for awhile, from hope, a gay and flourishing appearance. But time betrays their weakness, and they fall into ruin of themselves. For, as in structures of every kind, the lower parts should have the greatest firmness
so the grounds and principles of actions should be just and true.

The man who flies shall fight again.
[Lat., Qui fugiebat, rusus praeliabitur.]

The sower of the seed is assuredly the author of the whole harvest of mischief.

There is a great deal of wishful thinking in such cases it is the easiest thing of all to deceive ones self.

Everything great is not always good, but all good things, are great.