Demosthenes Quotes

Demosthenes offers sharp, reflective thoughts on how we trick ourselves, weigh past benefits, and remember favors.

18 quotes

  1. Delivery, delivery, delivery.

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

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

  4. Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

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

  8. There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.

  9. Nothing is so easy as to deceive oneself; for what we wish, we readily believe.

  10. By persistent labor man may attain to all excellence.

  11. He who confers a favor should at once forget it, if he is not to show a sordid ungenerous spirit. To remind a man of a kindness conferred and to talk of it, is little different from reproach.

  12. 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.

  13. Success has a great tendency to conceal and throw a veil over the evil deeds of men.

  14. I decline to buy repentance at the cost of ten thousand drachmas.

  15. It is impossible for men engaged in low and groveling pursuits to have noble and generous sentiments. A man's thought must always follow his employment.

  16. Close alliances with despots are never safe for free states.

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

  18. The most noble title any child can have is Third.