Demosthenes: “If you imagine that Chalcidians or Megarians will save Greece, while you run away from the contest, you imagine wrong.”

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…

Such is the truth, spoken with perfect freedom, purely from good-will and for the best: not a speech fraught with flattery and mischief and deceit, to earn money for the speaker, and to put the commonwealth into the hands of our enemies.

I say, you must either desist from these practices, or blame none but yourselves for the wretched condition of your affairs.

For this reason he will show us no mercy, if he get us into his power: and therefore you must make up your minds, that the struggle will be one for life and death.