Demosthenes H Quotes & Sayings

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. — Orson Scott Card

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. — Demosthenes

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. — Demosthenes

When Demosthenes was asked what were the three most important aspects of oratory, he answered, 'Action, Action, Action.' — Plutarch

Virtue begins with understanding and is fulfilled by courage. — Demosthenes

The fact speak for themselves. — Demosthenes

Every dictator is an enemy of freedom, an opponent of law. — Demosthenes

Clouds cannot cover secret places, nor denials conceal truth. — Demosthenes

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. — Sinclair Lewis

There are all kinds of devices invented for the protection and preservation of countries: defensive barriers, forts, trenches, and the like ... But prudent minds have as a natural gift one safeguard which is the common possession of all, and this applies especially to the dealings of democracies. What is this safeguard? Skepticism. This you must preserve. This you must retain. If you can keep this, you need fear no harm. — Demosthenes

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. ========== — Anonymous

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

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

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

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

What a man wishes, he will believe. — Demosthenes

Nothing is more easy than to deceive one's self, as our affections are subtle persuaders. — Demosthenes

Excessive dealings with tyrants are not good for the security of free states. — Demosthenes

Close alliances with despots are never safe for free states. — Demosthenes

Good fortune is the greatest of blessings, but good counsel comes next, and the lack of it destroys the other also. — Demosthenes

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

The end of wisdom is consultation and deliberation. — Demosthenes

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. — Anonymous

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. — Demosthenes

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. — Demosthenes

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 — John Calvin

What we wish, that we readily believe. — Demosthenes

Pythias once, scoffing at Demosthenes, said that his arguments smelt of the lamp. — Plutarch

I decline to buy repentance at the cost often thousand drachmas. — Demosthenes

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