70 Quotes by Demosthenes

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.

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.

It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery.

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe; but such expectations are often inconsistent with the real state of things.

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

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.

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.

One believes in what one wants to believe in...

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