Nothing, O men of Athens, have you ever set on foot or contrived rightly in the beginning: you always follow the event, stop when you are too late, on any new occurrence prepare and bustle again.
Demosthenes criticizes the Athenians' consistent failure to act proactively, instead reacting belatedly to events.
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If we admitted the truth of what would be your best possible answer, namely, that all you do is for honor and renown, I wonder what puts it into your head, that you ought from such motives to exert yourself and undergo toil and danger…
They say that you should keep quiet, though you are injured; but they can not themselves keep quiet among you, though no one injures them.
But I suppose, you inherit a reputation from your father and grandfather, which it were disgraceful in your own person to extinguish, whereas the ancestry of the state was ignoble and mean.
Yea, among these men, some have risen rapidly from poverty to wealth, from meanness and obscurity to repute and honor, while you, on the contrary, have fallen from honor to obscurity, from wealth to indigence.
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