Demosthenes Quotes

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

Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men the most.

That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population should be sent to other worlds, to spread mankind so far across the galaxy that no disaster, no invasion could ever threaten the human race with annihilation. "The most noble title any child can have," Demosthenes wrote, "is Third.

The most noble title any child can have, Demosthenes wrote, is third.

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.

As a vessel is known by its sound whether it be cracked or not, so men are proved by their speeches whether they be wise or foolish.

I am encouraged as I look at some of those who have listened to their "different drum": Einstein was hopeless at school math and commented wryly on his inadequacy in human relations. Winston Churchill was an abysmal failure in his early school years. Byron, that revolutionary student, had to compensate for a club foot; Demosthenes for a stutter; and Homer was blind. Socrates couldn't manage his wife, and infuriated his countrymen. And what about Jesus, if we need an ultimate example of failure with one's peers? Or an ultimate example of love?

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

Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.

...if Clinton's answers come off as well-intended lectures, Obama is offering soaring sermons and generational opportunity. In 1960, the articulate Adlai Stevenson compared his own oratory unfavorably with John F. Kennedy's. "Do you remember," Stevenson said, "that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, 'How well he spoke,' but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, 'Let us march.' " At this hour, Obama is the Democrats' Demosthenes.

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

Do you remember that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, "How well he spoke" but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, they said, "Let us march.

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.

What a man wishes he generally believes to be true

There were two things, they told Doremus, that distinguished this prairie Demosthenes. He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts - figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect.

The Nordic language recognizes four orders of foreignness. The first is the otherlander, or utlänning, the stranger that we recognize as being a human of our world, but of another city or country. The second is the framling—Demosthenes merely drops the accent from the Nordic främling. This is the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another world. The third is the raman, the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another species. The fourth is the true alien, the varelse, which includes all the animals, for with them no conversation is possible. They live, but we cannot guess what purposes or causes make them act. They might be intelligent, they might be self-aware, but we cannot know it.

Virtue begins with understanding and is fulfilled by courage.

Valentine went back to class without answering. That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population should be sent to other worlds, to spread mankind so far across the galaxy that no danger, no invasion could ever threaten the human race with annihilation. "The most noble title any child can have," Demosthenes wrote, "is Third.

Demosthenes, the great Athenian patriot, cried out to his countrymen when they seemed too confused and divided to stand against the tyranny of Macedonia: “In God's name, I beg of you to think.” For a long while, most Athenians ridiculed Demosthenes’ entreaty: Macedonia was a great way distant, and there was plenty of time. Only at the eleventh hour did the Athenians perceive the truth of his exhortations. And that eleventh hour was too late. So it may be with Americans today. If we are too indolent to think, we might as well surrender to our enemies tomorrow.

Charlie Munger gave me a great quotation on this subject, from Demosthenes: “Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.” The belief that some fundamental limiter is no longer valid—and thus historic notions of fair value no longer matter—is invariably at the core of every bubble and consequent crash. In fiction, willing suspension of disbelief adds to our enjoyment.

Was man wünscht, das glaubt auch jeder.

Speak as educated nature suggests to you, and you will do well, but let it be educated and not raw, rude, uncultivated nature. Demosthenes took unbounded pains with his voice, and Cicero, who was naturally weak, made a long journey into Greece to correct his manner of speaking. With far nobler themes, let us not be less ambitious to excel.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each me wishes, that he also believes is true.

ὃ γάρ ἐστι χείριστον αὐτῶν ἐκ τοῦ παρεληλυθότος χρόνου, τοῦτο πρὸς τὰ μέλλοντα βέλτιστον ὑπάρχει.

The orator Demosthenes once said that virtue begins with understanding and is fulfilled by courage.

Some academic once asked Demosthenes what the three most important traits of speechmaking were. His reply says it all: “Action, Action, Action!” Sure,

All Demosthenes’ eloquence could never revive a body that luxury and the arts had enervated

Some academic once asked Demosthenes what the three most important traits of speechmaking were. His reply says it all: “Action, Action, Action!

Military history is just as often the tangential story of an appeasement that fails to head off warmongering as it is of an aggressive chest-thumping that prompts conflict. The destructive military careers of Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler all would have ended earlier had any of their numerous enemies united when the odds favored them, had any listened to a Demosthenes, a Cato the Younger, or a Churchill.

However, in the view of many Athenians he had, in effect, stolen the credit from Demosthenes. This point is frequently mentioned in the play. Knights was awarded first prize in the drama competition at the Lenaea festival in 424 BC.

Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. But what a Tully or a Demosthenes could scarcely effect over a Roman or Athenian audience, every Capuchin, every itinerant or stationary teacher can perform over the generality of mankind, and in a higher degree, by touching such gross and vulgar passions.

The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second.

The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. ==========

But in our lives, when our worst instincts are in control, we dally. We don’t act like Demosthenes, we act frail and are powerless to make ourselves better. We may be able to articulate a problem, even potential solutions, but then weeks, months, or sometimes years later, the problem is still there. Or it’s gotten worse. As though we expect someone else to handle it, as though we honestly believe that there is a chance of obstacles unobstacle-ing themselves. We’ve all done it. Said: “I am so [overwhelmed, tired, stressed, busy, blocked, outmatched].” And then what do we do about it? Go out and party. Or treat ourselves. Or sleep in. Or wait. It feels better to ignore or pretend. But you know deep down that that isn’t going to truly make it any better. You’ve got to act. And you’ve got to start now. We forget: In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given. And the only way you’ll do something spectacular is by using it all to your advantage.

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.

Love feels good. It’s perfectly balanced, and it never involves sacrifice. If it doesn’t feel good, if it's obsessive/needy, or if demands some kind of sacrifice from you, it’s not love.

There are things to be done. Resist retreat as a matter of strategy and principle. And provide the means to continue our dominant role in the world by keeping our economic house in order. And finally, we can follow the advice of Demosthenes when asked what was to be done about the decline of Athens. His reply? 'I will give what I believe is the fairest and truest answer: Don't do what you are doing now.

In struggling with his unfortunate fate, Demosthenes found his true calling: He would be the voice of Athens, its great speaker and conscience. He would be successful precisely because of what he’d been through and how he’d reacted to it. He had channeled his rage and pain into his training, and then later into his speeches, fueling it all with a kind of fierceness and power that could be neither matched nor resisted.

… You’re reading History? A perfectly respectable school. The very worst is English literature and the next worst is Modern Greats. You want either a first or a fourth. There is no value in anything between. Time spent on a good second is time thrown away. You should go to the best lectures—Arkwright on Demosthenes for instance—irrespective of whether they are in your school or not…. Clothes. Dress as you do in a country house. Never wear a tweed coat and flannel trousers—always a suit.

Bir insanın mutlu olması için gelişmiş bir şehirde doğmuş olması gerekiği iddia edildi. Bence gerçek mutluluğu erdem ve ruhun yüceliğinde bulan birinin nereden geldiği önemli değildir. ... Sağlam bir bitkinin her toprağa kök saldığı gibi erdem de faziletli karakterlere ve çalışma hırsıyla kavrulan ruhlara aynı şekilde kök salar. Şayet yaşam ya da düşünme tarzında yüksek standartlara ulaşamıyorsak, bu vatanımızın küçüklüğüyle değil kişisel yetersizlikle alakalıdır.

They didn't realize for a moment that even a Demosthenes could be reduced to silence at a mass-meeting by 50 idiots who had come there to shout him down and use their fists against his supporters. Their innate cowardice prevents them from exposing themselves to such a danger; they always work ' silently' and never dare to make 'noise, ' or to come forward in public. Even today, I must warn our young movement in the strongest possible terms to guard against falling into the snare of those so-called ' silent workers. ' They are not only cowards but also, and always will be, incompetents and do-nothings. A man who is aware of certain things and knows that danger threatens, and at the same time sees the possibility of a certain remedy, has an obligation not to work ' in silence' but openly and publicly. He must fight against the evil, and for its cure. If he does not, then he is a timid weakling who fails from cowardice, laziness, or incompetence.

They didn't realize for a moment that even a Demosthenes7 could be reduced to silence at a mass-meeting by 50 idiots who had come there to shout him down and use their fists against his supporters. Their innate cowardice prevents them from exposing themselves to such a danger; they always work ' silently' and never dare to make 'noise, ' or to come forward in public. Even today, I must warn our young movement in the strongest possible terms to guard against falling into the snare of those so-called ' silent workers. ' They are not only cowards but also, and always will be, incompetents and do-nothings. A man who is aware of certain things and knows that danger threatens, and at the same time sees the possibility of a certain remedy, has an obligation not to work ' in silence' but openly and publicly. He must fight against the evil, and for its cure. If he does not, then he is a timid weakling who fails from cowardice, laziness, or incompetence.

In real life, the political and strategic games used by politicians and statesmen are in fact social games - requiring social intelligence as well as technical mastery of information. The skills of the orator, cultivated by ancient statesmen like Cicero and Demosthenes, or by modern statesmen like Benjamin Disraeli and Abraham Lincoln, require emotional maturity and the talent of seeing events through the eyes of others. A great statesman sets aside his own egoism. He takes a more objective view. In this way, he avoids the errors that attend a purely egoistic standpoint. The explanation which Kierkegaard offered, which is none too flattering, is that people no longer desire a great king, a heroic liberator or an authoritative religion. They don’t want strict rules or high standards. That is because they want an easy time of it. They want a soft existence which can only be guaranteed by eschewing the great and heroic, the true and the noble. This is the moral perspective of high politics and of true statesmanship. Only those who reach this fifth stage can transform world calamity into world regeneration.

Ralph Waldo Emerson would later observe that “Souls are not saved in bundles.”16 Johnson fervently believed in each individual’s mysterious complexity and inherent dignity. He was, through it all, a moralist, in the best sense of that term. He believed that most problems are moral problems. “The happiness of society depends on virtue,” he would write. For him, like other humanists of that age, the essential human act is the act of making strenuous moral decisions. He, like other humanists, believed that literature could be a serious force for moral improvement. Literature gives not only new information but new experiences. It can broaden the range of awareness and be an occasion for evaluation. Literature can also instruct through pleasure. Today many writers see literature and art only in aesthetic terms, but Johnson saw them as moral enterprises. He hoped to be counted among those writers who give “ardor to virtue and confidence to truth.” He added, “It is always a writer’s duty to make the world better.” As Fussell puts it, “Johnson, then, conceives of writing as something very like a Christian sacrament, defined in the Anglican catechism as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given to us.’ ” Johnson lived in a world of hack writers, but Johnson did not allow himself to write badly—even though he wrote quickly and for money. Instead, he pursued the ideal of absolute literary honesty. “The first step to greatness is to be honest” was one of Johnson’s maxims. He had a low but sympathetic view of human nature. It was said in Greek times that Demosthenes was not a great orator despite his stammer; he was a great orator because he stammered. The deficiency became an incentive to perfect the associated skill. The hero becomes strongest at his weakest point. Johnson was a great moralist because of his deficiencies. He came to understand that he would never defeat them. He came to understand that his story would not be the sort of virtue-conquers-vice story people like to tell. It would be, at best, a virtue-learns-to-live-with-vice story. He wrote that he did not seek cures for his failings, but palliatives. This awareness of permanent struggle made him sympathetic to others’ failings. He was a moralist, but a tenderhearted one.

Doremus Jessup, so inconspicuous an observer, watching Senator Windrip from so humble a Boeotia, could not explain his power of bewitching large audiences. The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his "ideas" almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store. Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill. Seven years before his present credo—derived from Lee Sarason, Hitler, Gottfried Feder, Rocco, and probably the revue Of Thee I Sing—little Buzz, back home, had advocated nothing more revolutionary than better beef stew in the county poor-farms, and plenty of graft for loyal machine politicians, with jobs for their brothers-in-law, nephews, law partners, and creditors. Doremus had never heard Windrip during one of his orgasms of oratory, but he had been told by political reporters that under the spell you thought Windrip was Plato, but that on the way home you could not remember anything he had said. There were two things, they told Doremus, that distinguished this prairie Demosthenes. He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts—figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect. But below this surface stagecraft was his uncommon natural ability to be authentically excited by and with his audience, and they by and with him. He could dramatize his assertion that he was neither a Nazi nor a Fascist but a Democrat—a homespun Jeffersonian-Lincolnian-Clevelandian-Wilsonian Democrat—and (sans scenery and costume) make you see him veritably defending the Capitol against barbarian hordes, the while he innocently presented as his own warm-hearted Democratic inventions, every anti-libertarian, anti-Semitic madness of Europe. Aside from his dramatic glory, Buzz Windrip was a Professional Common Man. Oh, he was common enough. He had every prejudice and aspiration of every American Common Man. He believed in the desirability and therefore the sanctity of thick buckwheat cakes with adulterated maple syrup, in rubber trays for the ice cubes in his electric refrigerator, in the especial nobility of dogs, all dogs, in the oracles of S. Parkes Cadman, in being chummy with all waitresses at all junction lunch rooms, and in Henry Ford (when he became President, he exulted, maybe he could get Mr. Ford to come to supper at the White House), and the superiority of anyone who possessed a million dollars. He regarded spats, walking sticks, caviar, titles, tea-drinking, poetry not daily syndicated in newspapers and all foreigners, possibly excepting the British, as degenerate. But he was the Common Man twenty-times-magnified by his oratory, so that while the other Commoners could understand his every purpose, which was exactly the same as their own, they saw him towering among them, and they raised hands to him in worship.

first is the otherlander, or utlänning, the stranger that we recognize as being a human of our world, but of another city or country. The second is the framling—Demosthenes merely drops the accent from the Nordic främling. This is the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another world. The third is the raman, the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another species. The fourth is the true alien, the varelse, which includes all the animals, for with them no conversation is possible. They live, but we cannot guess what purposes or causes make them act. They might be intelligent, they might be self-aware, but we cannot know it.

I might preach to you for ever," declared Charles Spurgeon, "I might borrow the eloquence of Demosthenes or of Cicero, but ye will not come unto Christ. I might beg of you on my knees, with tears in my eyes, and show you the horrors of hell and the joys of heaven, the sufficiency of Christ, and your own lost condition, but you would non of you come unto Christ of yourselves unless the Spirit that rested on Christ should draw you. It is true of all men in their natural condition that they will not come unto Christ" (Free Will a Slave [reprint ed.; Allentown, Penn: Sword and Trowel, 1973], pp. 17-18).

Not half so serious as it is to abuse everything unreasonably. If abuse is your particular talent, abuse something that ought to be abused. Abuse the Conservatives—or the Liberals—it does not matter which, since they are always abusing each other. Make yourself felt by other people. You will like it, if they don't. It will make a man of you. Fill your mouth with pebbles, and howl at the sea, if you cannot do anything else. It did Demosthenes no end of good you know. You will have the satisfaction of imitating a great man.

In the period between Homer and Socrates most philosophers wrote in verse, and Plato, writing in the great age of Athenian tragedy and comedy, composed dramatic dialogue. Aristotle, an exact contemporary of the greatest Greek orator Demosthenes, preferred to write in prose monologue.

The truth is going to be utterly harsh, and then utterly joyful. Please trust me on this.

Politics uses story to exercise power. Adlai Stevenson once observed, “In classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, ‘How well he spoke’—but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, ‘Let us march.’”2 Turning words into action is the central distinction in communication.

The orator Demosthenes once said that virtue begins with understanding and is fulfilled by courage. We must begin by seeing ourselves and the world in a new way for the first time. Then we must fight to be different and fight to stay different—that’s the hard part.

Demosthenes noted, “What a man wishes, he will believe.” And

Louis Lomax wrote: It was as if Martin had been chiseled out of the black mountain to make an eternal liar out of white people. White people argued that Negroes were stupid; there was Martin with his Ph.D. in his mid-twenties. White people alleged that Negroes were lazy, unable to organize and accomplish an objective; Martin not only was hardworking, but he pulled together an organization that put thousands of people to walking for justice … White people stereotyped Negroes as men of violence, yet Martin mounted the only nonviolent social revolution in Western history. Most of all, Martin’s public speeches combined the wisdom of Socrates, the eloquence of Demosthenes, and the thunder of Isaiah. One could not have created a Black man who could have better filled the nation’s television screens.

From the First Philippic of Demosthenes, he plucked a passage that summed up his conception of a leader as someone who would not pander to popular whims. “As a general marches at the head of his troops,” so should wise politicians “march at the head of affairs, insomuch that they ought not to wait the event to know what measures to take, but the measures which they have taken ought to produce the event.

Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato, Aristotle, or any other of that class: you will, I admit, feel wonderfully allured, pleased, moved, enchanted; but turn from them to the reading of the Sacred Volume, and whether you will or not, it will so affect you, so pierce your heart, so work its way into your very marrow, that, in comparison of the impression so produced, that of orators and philosophers will almost disappear; making it manifest that in the Sacred Volume there is a truth divine, a something which makes it immeasurably superior to all the gifts and graces attainable by man. Section

He may steal," says Plato, "who knows how to do it." Oaths are frequent in the writings of Plato and Seneca. Anstippus taught that a wise man had a right to commit adultery. Aristotle vindicated the awful crimes of foeticide and infanticide. Even suicide was defended by Cicero and Seneca as the mark of a hero, and Demosthenes, Cato, Brutus and Cassius carried the means of self-destruction about them, that they might not fall alive into the hands of their enemies.

Go back 2,400 years, and you can hear it from the Athenian orator Demosthenes as he chastises his fellow citizens for responding to Macedonian aggression by “forever debating the question and never making any progress” and issuing “empty decrees.” “All words, apart from action,” Demosthenes warned, “seem vain and idle, especially from Athenian lips: for the greater our reputation for a ready tongue, the greater the distrust it inspires in all men.” We’ve had several years now of watching Obama and his foreign policy team prove this eternal truth as they have feebly and fecklessly responded to crisis after crisis in Ukraine, Syria, and a dozen other venues.

To paraphrase Demosthenes, the greater this administration’s ready tongue, the greater distrust it inspires in our allies, and the greater boldness it creates in our enemies. Or to put it in my old man’s more earthy terms when I smarted off, “Don’t let your mouth write checks your ass can’t cash.” Obama has been bouncing foreign policy checks from Ukraine to the South China Sea, and most points in between.

Coryphasium on the coast of their domain in Messenia remained in the hands of Demosthenes

What can one do with Demosthenes?” his secretary complained. “Everything that he has thought of for a whole year is thrown into confusion by one woman in one night.

When Aeschines spoke, they said, “How well he speaks.” But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, “Let’s march against Philip.

Whether it’s six things or five—or sixty-five—the point is, what’s in front of you is what matters. The sooner the better, as Demosthenes said.

You think you’re annoyed because of Plikt’s arrogance, but that isn’t so. Plikt is not arrogant; she is merely precise. You are properly ashamed that you have not yet read Demosthenes’ history of your own people, and so in your shame you are annoyed at Plikt because she is not guilty of your sin.” “I thought speakers didn’t believe in sin,” said a sullen boy. Andrew smiled. “You believe in sin, Styrka, and you do things because of that belief. So sin is real in you, and knowing you, this speaker must believe in sin.

Without the Peloponnesian War, Demosthenes would have remained an obscure politician; without the English invasion, Joan of Arc would have died peaceably at Domremy; without the Revolution, Carnot and Napoleon would have finished their existence in lowly rank; without the present war General Petain would have finished his career at the head of a brigade.

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises. Demosthenes

[T]he fruits of the earth by which men live were first manifest among us*, even apart from their being a superlative boon to all men, constitutes an acknowledged proof that this land is the mother of our ancestors. For all things that bring forth young produce at the same time nutriment out of the organism itself for those that are born. * According to tradition the olive was created by the goddess Athena, while the culture of grain, especially wheat and barley, was established by Demeter, whose mysteries were celebrated at Eleusis close to Athens. (Funeral Speech section 5)

The nobility of birth of these men has been acknowledged from time immemorial by all mankind. For it is possible for them and for each one of their remote ancestors man by man to trace back their being, not only to a physical father, but also to this land of theirs as a whole, a common possession, of which they are acknowledged to be the indigenous children. For alone of all mankind they settled the very land from which they were born and handed it down to their descendants, so that justly one may assume that those who came as migrants into their cities and are denominated citizens of the same are comparable to adopted children; but these men are citizens of their native land by right of legitimate birth. (Funeral Speech section 4)

I began straightway to study how they might receive their due tribute of praise; but as I studied and searched my mind the conclusion forced itself upon me that to speak as these dead deserve was one of those things that cannot be done. For, since they scorned the love of life that is inborn in all men and chose rather to die nobly than to live and look upon Greece in misfortune, how can they have failed to leave behind them a record of valor surpassing all power of words to express? (Funeral Speech section 1)

As for Courage and the other elements of virtue, I shrink from rehearsing the whole story, being on my guard for fear an untimely length shall attach to my speech , but such facts as it is worth while even for those who are familiar with them to recall to mind and most profitable for the inexperienced to hear, events of great power to inspire and calling for no tedious length of speech, these I shall endeavor to rehearse in summary fashion. For the ancestors of this present generation, both their fathers and those who bore the names of these men in time past, by which they are recognized by those of our race, never at any time wronged any man, whether Greek or barbarian, but it was their pride, in addition to all their other good qualities, to be true gentlemen and supremely just, and in defending themselves they accomplished a long list of noble deeds. (Funeral Speech section 6-7)

Now, if it were my view that, of those qualities that constitute virtue, courage alone was their possession, I might praise this and be done with the speaking, but since it fell to their lot also to have been nobly born and strictly brought up and to have lived with lofty ideals, because of all which they had every reason to be good men, I should be ashamed if I were found to have passed over any of these topics. (Funeral Speech section 3)

I have recalled to mind the above-mentioned, each of which affords so many charming themes that our writers of poetry, whether recited or sung, and many historians, have made the deeds of those men the subjects of their respective arts; at the present time I shall mention the following deeds, which, though in point of merit they are no whit inferior to the former, still, through being closer in point of time, have not yet found their way into poetry or even been exalted to epic rank. (Funeral Speech section 9)

And though what I shall say next has been said before by many another, still even at this date those dead must not be deprived of their just and excellent praise. For I say that with good reason those men [participants of Greco-Persian Wars] might be judged so far superior to those who campaigned against Troy, that the latter, the foremost princes out of the whole of Greece, with difficulty captured a single stronghold of Asia after besieging it for ten years, whereas those men single-handed not only repulsed a host assembled from an entire continent, which had already subdued all other lands, but also inflicted punishment for the wrong done the rest of the Greeks. Furthermore, checking all acts of selfish aggrandisement among the Greeks themselves, assigning themselves to each station where justice was arrayed, they went on bearing the brunt of all dangers that chanced to arise until the lapse of time brings us to the generation now living. (Funeral Speech section 10-11)

I should not hesitate to assert that in my judgement the men who die at the post of duty on either side do not share the defeat but are both alike victors. For the mastery among the survivors is decided as the deity disposes, but that which each was in duty bound to contribute to this end, every man who has kept his post in battle has done. But if, as a mortal being, he meets his doom, what he has suffered is an incident caused by chance, but in spirit he remains unconquered by his opponents. (Funeral Speech section 19)

Ambassador, defined: "An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie [speak falsely; remain] abroad for the good of his country." — Henry Wotton. Ambassadors: "Do you know why everybody wants to be an ambassador? It's because when an ambassador walks down the corridor of his embassy, everybody kisses his ass." — Philip Habib Ambassadors, accountability of: An ambassador is responsible "for his reports ... for his advice ... for the instructions received [by him from his government] ... for the use of his name, and ... for his integrity or lack of it in acquitting all his responsibilities ... His report enable [his government] to examine the situation; if they are truthful, [his government] will decide directly, otherwise the opposite will happen." — Demosthenes (384-322 B.C.)

Having been chosen, however, to extol these men in a speech, unless I have the sympathy of my hearers, I fear that because of my eagerness I may effect the very opposite of what I ought. For wealth and speed of foot and strength of body and all other such things have their rewards self-assured to their possessors, and in those fields they win who have the luck, even if not one of the others wishes their success. On the other hand, the persuasiveness of words depends upon the goodwill of the hearers, and with the help of this, even if the eloquence be moderate, it reaps glory and gains favor, but lacking this help, even if it be surpassingly good, it is thwarted by those who hear.

Having been chosen, however, to extol these men in a speech, unless I have the sympathy of my hearers, I fear that because of my eagerness I may effect the very opposite of what I ought. For wealth and speed of foot and strength of body and all other such things have their rewards self-assured to their possessors, and in those fields they win who have the luck, even if not one of the others wishes their success. On the other hand, the persuasiveness of words depends upon the goodwill of the hearers, and with the help of this, even if the eloquence be moderate, it reaps glory and gains favor, but lacking this help, even if it be surpassingly good, it is thwarted by those who hear. (Funeral Speech section 13-14)

For of all virtue, I say, and I repeat it, the beginning is understanding and the fulfillment is courage; by the one it is judged what ought to be done and by the other this is carried to success. (Funeral Speech section 17)

In the meantime it is necessary to interrupt my discourse for a moment, before declaring the deeds of these men, to solicit the goodwill of those born outside this race who have accompanied us to the tomb*. * The welcome extended to aliens at the public funerals is mentioned in Thuc. 2.34.4. Pericles recognizes their presence, Thuc. 2.36.4. (Funeral Speech section 13)

While it stands to reason that many influences helped to make them what they were, not least was their virtue ascribable to our form of government. For though absolute governments dominated by a few create fear in their citizens, they fail to awaken the sense of shame. Consequently, when the test of war comes, everyone lightheartedly proceeds to save himself, knowing full well that if only he succeeds in appeasing his masters by presents or any other civility whatsoever, even though he becomes guilty of the most revolting conduct, only slight reproach will attach to him thereafter. Democracies, however, possess many other just and noble features, to which right-minded men should hold fast, and in particular it is impossible to deter freedom of speech, which depends upon speaking the truth, from exposing the truth. For neither is it possible for those who commit a shameful act to appease all the citizens*, so that even the lone individual, uttering the deserved reproach, makes the guilty wince: for even those who would never speak an accusing word themselves are pleased at hearing the same, provided another utters it. Through fear of such condemnation, all these men, as was to be expected, for shame at the thought of subsequent reproaches, manfully faced the threat arising from our foes and chose a noble death in preference to life and disgrace. * Under an oligarchy, the speaker means, it is possible for the wrongdoer to seal the mouths of the small ruling clique by means of bribes, but under a democracy it is impossible to buy the silence of thousands of citizens. The reference is to oligarchic governments set up by the Spartans in subject states. Pericles praised the Athenian form of government as against the Spartan, Thuc. 2.37-39. (Funeral Speech section 25-26)

Furthermore, in contests of which the deity, the master of all, has disposed the outcome as it chose, it is necessary of course to acquit all others, being but human, of the charge of cowardice, but when it comes to the means by which the leader of our opponents prevailed over those appointed to the command of our army, no one could justly locate the cause in the rank and file of either the enemy or ourselves. But if, after all, there is any human being who might rightly lay a charge concerning the issue of that battle, he would with good reason advance it against those of the Thebans* who were appointed to this command, nor could anyone rightly lay blame upon the rank and file of either the Thebans or ourselves. * Philip seems to have deceived the Athenians by a feigned retreat while throwing his strongest troops against the Thebans. This stratagem broke the line and decided the battle. The Theban general Theagenes and his colleagues seem to have been no more to blame than the rest. (Funeral Speech section 21-22)

The Hippothoontidae bore in mind the marriage of Alope, from which Hippothoon was born, and they knew also who their founder was; about these matters—to avoid impropriety on an occasion like this I forbear to speak plainly*—they thought it was their duty to be seen performing deeds worthy of these ancestors. * Alope’s son was said to have been twice exposed, and twice rescued and suckled by a mare. The use of mare’s milk as a food prevailed among the Scythians, as the Greeks knew well from their colonists in the region of the Black Sea, if not from Hdt. 4.2; Gylon, grandfather of Demosthenes, had lived in the Crimea and was said to have married a Thracian wife. The orator was sometimes twitted by his opponents about his Thracian blood. He may have been sensitive. Consequently the attitude here revealed might be construed as evidence for the genuineness of the speech. (Funeral Speech section 31)

Neither were the Aegeidae ignorant that Theseus, the son of Aegeus, for the first time established equality in the State.* They thought it, therefore, a dreadful thing to be false to the principles of that ancestor, and they preferred to be dead rather than through love of life to survive among the Greeks with this equality lost. * According to Plut. Thes. 25, it was equality between newcomers and natives that Theseus established; the word ἰσονομία usually means equality before the law and is almost a synonym for democracy. (Funeral Speech section 28)

Ambassadors, spies: Ambassadors are licensed spies; they should not forget that spies may also be unlicensed ambassadors. Ambassadors, use of: If you want someone to deliver your mail to a foreign government, get a postal clerk. If you want to communicate effectively, appoint an ambassador in whose professionalism and discretion you trust. Tell him what you want to accomplish and listen to his advice on how to persuade his hosts to agree to it. Don't tell him how to flatter and cajole them into doing what you want them to do. If he doesn't know how to do this, you shouldn't have appointed him; you need another ambassador. If he knows how to do it and normally does it well, but can't do it in a particular case, you probably need more realistic objectives and expectations — not a new ambassador — to deal with the issue. Ambassadors, words as weapons: "Ambassadors have no battleships at their disposal, or heavy infantry, or fortresses; their weapons are words and opportunities. In important transactions opportunities are fleeting; once they are missed they cannot be recovered." — Demosthenes Ambiguity, creative: If two parties to a negotiation cannot agree, they may be able to set aside their disagreements, agreeing to disagree or agreeing not to challenge each other's positions on specific points. Such creative ambiguity is often the grease on which progress in relations between states turns. (Cf. Amb. Chas Freeman's instrumental role in Nixon's visit to China in 1972 and the subsequent Shanghai Communique)

Our entire culture has grown out of a feeling of inferiority, out of all those unfulfilled ambitions. And yet it is the other way around: That which is weak in us gives us strength. This constant effort to compensate for weakness governs our entire lives. Demosthenes had a stammer, and that was exactly why he became the greatest speaker of all time. Not in

The reason why Professor Earle was pleased with this Prose Diction, and why Mr. W. B. Yeats believes that 'in this century he who does not strive to be a perfect craftsman achieves nothing,' is that men understand now the im- possibility of speaking aloud all that is within them, and if they do not speak it, they cannot write as they speak. The most they can do is to write as they would speak in a less solitary world. A man cannot say all that is in his heart to a woman or another man. The waters are too deep between us. We have not the confidence in what is within us, nor in our voices. Any man talking to the deaf or in dark- ness will leave unsaid things which he could say were he not compelled to shout, or were it light; or perhaps he will venture once — even twice— and a silence or a foolish noise prohibits him. But the silence of solitude is kindly; it allows a man to speak as if there were another in the world like himself; and in very truth, out of the multitudes, in the course of years, one or two may come, or many, who can enter that solitude and converse with him, inspired by him to confidence and articulation. Wisely did Quintilian argue against dictation, that ‘privacy is rendered impossible by it; and that a spot free from witnesses and the deepest possible silence are the most desirable for persons engaged writing, no one can doubt. You are not therefore necessarily to listen to those who think that groves and woods are the most proper places for study. ... To me, assuredly, such retirement seems rather conducive to pleasure than an incentive to literary exertion. Demosthenes acted more wisely, who secluded himself in a place where no voice could be heard, and no prospect contemplated, that his eyes might not oblige his mind to attend to anything else besides his business. As to those who study by lamplight, therefore, let the silence of the night, the closed chamber, and a single light, keep them, as it were, wholly in seclusion. . . .