Demosthenes: “Not the same ideas, men of Athens, are presented to me, when I look at our condition and when at the speeches which are…”

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.

Because our city is the only one where liberty is allowed to speak for the enemy, where a man taking a bribe may safely address the people, though they have been deprived of their possessions.

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.